Big-Iron to Open Up for AMD

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Posted by Hemos on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:14AM from the opening-up-the-big-guns dept.

vincecate writes "Traditionally the key chips that have allowed companies to scale multiprocessors to large numbers have been proprietary. Some examples are the Cray SeaStar, SGI NUMAlink, HP sx1000, and the IBM X3/Hurricane. This proprietary paradigm is about to change to a more open one. Two companies have developed key chips for building large Opteron multiprocessors, and they will be commercial off-the-shelf parts. PathScale has released InfiniPath which can be used with an Infiniband switch to make a high-bandwidth low-latency interconnect for a supercomputer cluster. The other company is Newisys, which will soon release the Horus chip. This chip will make it possible to build 32 socket (64-core) shared memory Opteron systems."

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it's about time by qwertphobia · 2005-10-17 03:17 · Score: 4, Funny

It's about time! That z990 under my desk just isn't fast enough :-)

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1. Re:it's about time by csirac · 2005-10-17 04:22 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You must have a tall desk :-)
Expect to see.... by 8127972 · 2005-10-17 03:18 · Score: 4, Funny

.... an Alienware game system with this chipset by the end of the week.

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1. Re:Expect to see.... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-17 03:33 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  I'm holding out for the laptop
2. Re:Expect to see.... by nothingbutcoupons · 2005-10-17 03:59 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  With the natural progression of names for AMD processors (Athlons, Semprons, Opterons), wouldn't it be cool if AMD could get the rights and the next kick-ass Alienware systems were made from Klingons?
  
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3. Re:Expect to see.... by Peter+La+Casse · 2005-10-17 05:23 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Actually, I don't think it would help much. Most games now don't benefit from 2 way SMP, so the benefit from 64 way is debateable to say the least.
  
  64 processors will let you run a lot more spyware before your frame rate is affected.
4. Re:Expect to see.... by Cromac · 2005-10-17 06:30 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Actually, I don't think it would help much. Most games now don't benefit from 2 way SMP, so the benefit from 64 way is debateable to say the least. Still for servers, this thing might help. I suspect that most server applications/os's will have servere scaleability problems once you go this far SMP though.
  Fortunately all computing isn't about games. With this setup you'll be able to encode those DVD rips to DIVX in seconds instead of hours!
god damnit by Douglas+Simmons · 2005-10-17 03:29 · Score: 5, Funny

You kids, with your ultrasparc risc processing synchronous hypermultithreading vax/vms redbox pbx mumbo jumbo and your Ska music. For Christ's sake, cut the cotton-pickin' bullshit and tell me which stocks to buy and which to short. Oh and that AMD "capturing" the retail market tip the other day? Thanks for costing me six thousand dollars, my wallet was too thick and giving me a bad back. Christ.
1. Re:god damnit by mikael · 2005-10-17 03:41 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  In my day, we used to toggle the OS and each program in bit by bit, remembering each opcode from memory. A keyboard was a musical instrument, a mouse was a type of vermin, and a terminal was where you attached the grounding wire of a lightning rod.
  
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2. Re:god damnit by sconeu · 2005-10-17 04:09 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  You had lightning rods? We just told the tallest person... "Go stand in that there field!" when a storm came! And we LIKED it that way!
  
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The Topic is Misleading! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-17 03:35 · Score: 1, Funny

For a minute I was excited I might get to pop an Opteron into my PDP.. that thing really lags when you try and load up Wolfenstein. Or "Adventure" for that matter.
Re:Is 32 by nganju · 2005-10-17 04:05 · Score: 5, Funny

For this context, 32 is plenty large. Large is relative. If you ask me how many grains of rice I ate last night, 100 would be a small number. If you ask the average slashdotter how many women he's dated, 1 is a huge number.

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Re:Imagine a... nah, too easy. by Mercano · 2005-10-17 04:23 · Score: 4, Funny

I imagine it warms the heart of a lot of us old AMD fanboys.
Plus anything else in the room it sits in. Great solution to the heating oil crunch! These things ain't P4s, but 32 CPUs is 32CPUs.

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Re:Is 32 by ArsonSmith · 2005-10-17 04:24 · Score: 2, Funny

If you ask the average slashdotter how many women he's dated, 1 is a huge number.

And the date was probably huge too.

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Re:Is 32 by IckySplat · 2005-10-17 04:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Are those women real?
Or integer /me ducks

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Re:Is 32 by brunson · 2005-10-17 04:57 · Score: 2, Funny

I have personally dated 14+32i women, and trust me... it can get pretty complex.

heheheheheheheheheh... math humor... heheheh heheheh heheheh

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Word from the Mac community... by jnadke · 2005-10-17 05:02 · Score: 2, Funny

This just in: Mac users say 64 core Opteron server will be almost as fast as the new Mac G5.