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Sun Grid Compute Utility

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-generation-of-data-farmers dept.

jbltgz writes "The Register is reporting that the long awaited Sun Grid Compute Utility has been opened to the public. Now you can run your CPU intensive jobs on a grid of AMD Opteron-based Sun Hardware for $1 per CPU per hour for a fraction of cost, in a fraction of the time."

42 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Selling off CPU time... by ZzzzSleep · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How long will it be until botnet operators start up a similar service? Or am I out of date and they have already done this? Anyway kudos to Sun for offering this service.

    ZzzzSleep

    --
    Emerald Astrology
  2. POVRay by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how long it would take for someone to port the POVRay engine to Sun's grid? At $1 per CPU/hour, this could be a boon for amatuer 3D graphics designers and the Internet Ray Tracing competitors. Use low res renders during testing, then pay Sun $25 to get your high quality result back in 20 minutes rather than the next day. Could be a lot of fun. :-)

    Can anyone think of other good uses for the average (or not so average) home user? Perhaps new image compression formats that rely on Sun's Grid to get the best compression/quality tradeoffs through brute-force power?

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:POVRay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, now that you asked, you can use all that computing power to...

      Compile gentoo with KDE in only 20hrs

      Browse 10 pages in Firefox

      Run Windows XP Pro AND Notepad at the same time

      Get 20FPS in BF2

      Run a "Hello World" java applet

    2. Re:POVRay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually someone from SGI ported POV Ray to MPI about 4 years ago:

      http://www.verrall.demon.co.uk/mpipov/

      There is also a PVM version as well.

      http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/p ovray/pvmpov.html

      For one of my graduate classes I am MPI enabling the latest povray source based on Leon Verrall, Andreas Dilger, & Brad Klines previous work mentioned above.

    3. Re:POVRay by dkf · · Score: 2, Funny
      Well, now that you asked, you can use all that computing power to...
      • Compile gentoo with KDE in only 20hrs
      • Browse 10 pages in Firefox
      • Run Windows XP Pro AND Notepad at the same time
      • Get 20FPS in BF2
      • Run a "Hello World" java applet
      Actually, only the compilation stands a chance of working as it is the only one that can work well as a batch job. The others require some kind of interactive display hardware in there, and you can bet you won't have that in the public offering. (Maybe you can get it from the top-end stuff, but if you're big enough for that, you're big enough to have your own supercomputer). My main concern relates to aspects of system security though; their FAQ is seriously deficient on details...
      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
  3. FYI: Non USians need not apply. by Angostura · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're not having you modelling your nukes on our servers thankyouverymuch.

    1. Re:FYI: Non USians need not apply. by MaineCoon · · Score: 4, Funny

      US citizens, however, are free to model nuclear weapons to their hearts' desire. Until Homeland Security shows up.

      --
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  4. Details please by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The ability to but powerful computing time is a cool idea that has been featured in several sci-fi novels. However the article fails to mention exactly how powerful these Sun CPUs are. How much bang do you get for your buck? They also fail to mention how hard it will be to write code for this platform. Can I simply send them some standard C source, or will I have to code using some special extensions that will make my code totally unportable and thus lock me into buying more and more time from them?

    --

    Philosophy.
    1. Re:Details please by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative

      However the article fails to mention exactly how powerful these Sun CPUs are. How much bang do you get for your buck?

      Sun claims that they are "dual-core Sun Fire, Opertron servers". That means that they are likely to be something like the V20z which range from 2.0 GHz to 2.2 GHz. It would be nice if they were a bit more specific (e.g. how do you know they'll upgrade the grid in the future?), but their FAQ makes it sound like they're relying on Solaris CPU stats to charge you. OS stats like that are usually based on time slices rather than actual computational power, thus making a "standardized" CPU/hour difficult to create.

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      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    2. Re:Details please by W2k · · Score: 2, Informative

      Supercomputers aren't about single ultra-powerful CPU:s. A supercomputer consists of lots of CPU:s, possibly thousands, working together. One Opteron 2.2GHz isn't a supercomputer, but a thousand such CPU:s certainly are, if made to work in parallel. Obviously this requires pretty advanced hardware to manage the interconnects and such, in addition to software specifically written for such systems, but that's why everyone doesn't has a supercomputer in his home, even though one can be built using mostly "off-the-shelf" PC hardware.

      --
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    3. Re:Details please by dslauson · · Score: 2, Informative
      Here's a link to an FAQ on Sun's site.

      Any code that can be compiled and tested on Solaris 10 can be run on the grid. However, to get the benefit of parallel execution (meaning running parts of a job on multiple processors at the same time), which is really the main benefit of running on a grid like this, you must either write multi-threaded code, or you must use the MPI library, which is pretty much the standard these days for scientific and parallel computing.

    4. Re:Details please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      Their FAQ says their nodes have two single-core Opterons and 4GB of RAM per cpu. I would guess they're using their own X4100 servers with AMD Opteron 254 (2.8GHz). Don't quote me, I don't work for Sun.

      From their FAQ:

      Q: What parallel environments (pvm, mpi, etc.) are available for use on the Sun Grid Utility Services?

      A: MPICH v1.2.6, an open implementation of the "Message Passing Interface" is the only parallel environment currently supported on the Sun Grid. MPICH is configured to leverage IP-based networking in our configuration, and is available on Sun Grid as an included resource for you to use without additional charge.

      If you're familiar with MPI, this should keep you pretty portable. They recommend you test with Solaris 10/x86_64 and gcc3 or Studio 10.

    5. Re:Details please by MK_CSGuy · · Score: 3, Informative

      From the FAQ:

       
      18. Q:
      What are the basic minimum technical requirements to run an application on the Sun Grid Compute Utility?
      A:
      The following requirements must be met:
      Application must run on Solaris 10 (x64).
      User must own the application or have proper legal licenses to run applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility.
      Applications must be scripted to work with N1 Grid Engine software.
      Application must be self-contained, with no dependencies on external libraries or data sets
      Application and data sets total size must be under 10GB.
      The user must upload application and data to the Sun Grid over the Internet via portal the Internet Portal at http://www.network.com/

    6. Re:Details please by dubiousdave · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not just a question of frequency of use. In order to have your own cluster to do this sort of work, you have to have a lot of infrastructure that many organizations can't really justify. A large datacenter can cost a fortune every year in direct power use by the computers, plus very heavy cooling requirements for the room. You also have to have one or more people running the cluster. Then, on top of all of that, you have to deal with upgrading and maintaining. It's a huge pain that a small, say, fabless semiconductor design firm, may not want to deal with. They focus on their core business of designing circuits and send those designs off to someone else's cluster to test.

      --
      Thank you. Drive through.
  5. A bug could be costly by DrDitto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use grid computing for simulations. If I were charged for CPU-hours, you can bet I would be more careful about debugging. I've wasted thousands of CPU hours because of bugs, or sloppy configuration, in my simulator generating incorrect results. One bug was an infinite loop that resulted in 100 CPUs spinning for a week before I noticed!

    1. Re:A bug could be costly by Pedrito · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Back in the day, I worked for the World Bank writing software on IBM mainframes. Our department was charged back based on our usage. I worked in the telecommunications division and we, like the IBM division, charged departments for their telephone usage. To do this, we'd load the call logs into SQL and then create the bills from that. Our database contained millions of phone calls over the previous year+ of data.

      During development, I made the mistake of doing an unqualified join between the primary call table and the table of departments (of which there were probably a few hundred. Pretty simple math... The result set was somewhere in the hundreds of millions to billions. I realized the problem the moment I submitted the job. Unfortunately, there was no way for me, a lowly user, to kill the job, once it began. By the time we managed to get the job killed, I had squandered thousands of dollars in computing charges. My boss was none too happy. Ah, the good old days...

  6. How's this work? by the_humeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it like getting an account on someone's server and then being able to do whatever the hell compute-intensive work you want? I can't seem to find the relavent details, or my Parkinson disease is kicking in.

  7. Obligatory by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Funny

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of... oh, forget it

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    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  8. Before anyone shouts :DUPE! by scenestar · · Score: 2, Informative

    Casual Sun observers will be scratching their heads right about now, believing that Sun had already announced such a service a long time ago. That's correct.

    rtfa kthnx

    --
    perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
  9. Free demo here... by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Click here to kick off a job on Sun's Compute Grid consisting of AMD Opteron-based Sun Hardware.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  10. Greetings Professor Falken... by boldtbanan · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if I can play games on Sun's system. Perhaps a nice game of chess? Or maybe Global Thermonuclear War?

  11. Sun Grid HW / SW specs by DAldredge · · Score: 4, Informative

    From their FAQ:

    Q:
    What are the components of the Sun Grid Compute Utility?
    A:
    The Sun Grid Compute Utility service consists of the following parts:

            * Sun Fire dual processor Opteron-based servers with 4GB/RAM per CPU
            * Solaris 10 (x64)
            * Solaris 10 OS;
            * Sun N1 Grid Engine 6 software;
            * Grid Network Infrastructure of 1Gb switched Data Network and 100 Mb dedicated management network;
            * Web-based access portal; and
            * Internet-only access to upload data and applications (no physical access to location);
            * Storage allocation of up to 10 GB per user account.

    http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/faq.xml

  12. What, they are trying this again? by Zangief · · Score: 2

    Wasn't their previous attempt to rent CPUs a failure?

    I remember an article in slashdot about how the Sun grid was completely unused.

  13. The Sun is setting by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Wow, $1/CPU/hr. Same price as an MP3 off of iTunes, so it must be worthwhile, right?

    OK, we are only about 3.5 months into the year of 2006, and lets look at some real data:

    I run a few small to medium sized HPC clusters, and on one of them, here are the CPU hours used during 2006 -- 163,000+ this is on less than $500k of hardware that is years old. That would cost $163k just in computing time, not to include time to port applications, debug, etc.

    Sun needs to be run by engineers and visionaries again, not by marketers. $1/CPU/hr is not going to do much better on those falling stock prices than selling $200 Linux PCs in Wal-Mart.

    1. Re:The Sun is setting by __aaahtg7394 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It gets even better when you consider that Sun's smaller Opteron kit starts at about 2k$/node. So, if you need more than a few months' processing, you can just buy the boxes and build the infrastructure for about the same cost.

      I suspect the real selling points are:
      - Sun's service is probably straightforward for app developers.
      - The hardware is essentially "infinite."
      - "Oh, you need a month's worth of processing done by next Monday? We'll have it done Saturday night, if you'd like to pick it up then, ma'am."
      - Two words: volume pricing.

      But, I have a hunch that the real point is marketing. "Oh, you need a 1,000 node grid? We happen to have expertise in building just such a thing. Here, give this information to your apps people, let them try it out, see if they like it. We can install just this setup for you here, if you'd like."

    2. Re:The Sun is setting by Tsunayoshi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The whole point of this was stated by John Schwartz when the idea first came up. This is moslty for the market of people who only do massive number crunching on a few occasions but often enough that they would maintain their own computing cluster. Now, these same people can get rid of the hardware, people, power, cooling, and lab space and the other costs associated with maintaing a cluster and just worry about paying for CPU time the few occasions they actually need it. And if suddenly you have an immediate need for 10x the computing power, let Sun know and you can get more systems involved for your project. If you maintained your own compute cluster, how easily could you add 50 cpus to a task if you are already running at 100% CPUS??

      --
      "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
  14. I would have made use of Sun's grid already by c0l0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    if it boasted a 64bit Java VM. A mate of mine does some very interesting research in number theory, and a few of his applications would need massive amounts of fast addressable memory. 64bit of address space would conveniently suffice, i suppose. Any suggestions on what else (cheap, or at least affordable) to consider using, anyone?

    --
    :%s/Open Source/Free Software/g

    YTARY!
    1. Re:I would have made use of Sun's grid already by kamg · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sun's JDK has 64-bit support for both sparc(v9) and amd64. Just run with the '-d64' flag.

  15. Re:Since I don't remember the earlier stories... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do you (the customer) supply the software to run on these distributed boxen?

    Yes. See the Sun FAQ.

    Cause if that's the case, I can see a business model that involves lophtcrack or John the Ripper.

    Considering that Sun has your Credit Card number and your contact information, I highly doubt you'll be getting away with much DDOSing or Spamming. Even if you use a stolen card #, Sun would be likely to kick you off the servers after they notice excessive network and/or mail server usage.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  16. Ok, so by ch-chuck · · Score: 3, Funny

    where do I submit my deck of fortran punch-cards and where do I pickup the printout?

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  17. This sounds familar by Matt+Perry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought that Sun already had their grid available and that no one wanted to use it because they would have to agree to be in a marketing campaign. Is this still the case? The terms of service on the network.com site redirects to an error page.

    --
    Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
  18. At last a solution for h264 DVD recoding!! by OlivierB · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I could compile mencode/mplayer for Solaris I could upload my dvd isos and get sun to encode these for me in H264 for my HTPC.
    I anticipate that each film would cost me ~$2. Not bad. Is that a safe bet? ANybody know what disk space they give for "personal files".
    Now to explain to my ISP that I am not participating in illegal file sharing with +100GB per month of traffic is not going to be easy..

    More seriously, I could use this to run some of my Monte-Carlo simulators..

    --
    Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
    1. Re:At last a solution for h264 DVD recoding!! by Slithe · · Score: 2, Informative

      The quota is 10 GB per account. Each CPU has 4GB of associated RAM. Is that enough space to encode a DVD?

      --
      ---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
  19. Re:Imagine All the SPAM! by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's why the grid nodes are not connected to the Internet.

  20. Re:Isnt this really expensive? by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's 2.2 GHz per processor, times about a thousand processors or so. That's how modern supercomputers work. The processing nodes themselves are somewhat unimpressive, but they're built so that they scale really well, and deal with problems that are designed so as to be broken up into lots of little parts and solved simultaneously. So if you used all the processors on the machine for an hour, your bill (theoretically) would be $1,000.

    The most powerful computer in the world right now, ASC Purple (it does nuclear weapons simulations for the USG), has 1.5 GHz RISC processors. Not exactly impressive, by today's standards ... except that it has something like 12,000 of them.

    It's the infrastructure to get that many processors (and their associated dangly bits) talking to each other and working on the same problem efficiently that's expensive and nontrivial.

    --
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  21. Is there a distributed alternative? by gfody · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Like seti or folding@home except instead of donating your spare cpu cycles for one particular task you'd be making them available for anyone to rent?

    The price per hour per cpu could be based on demand and could be distributed to all the contributers. Imagine all the processing power out there not being used. Especially the gpus on people's video cards while they're not playing games.

    --

    bite my glorious golden ass.
    1. Re:Is there a distributed alternative? by Tiger4 · · Score: 2, Funny

      "except instead of donating your spare cpu cycles for one particular task you'd be making them available for anyone to rent?"

      Yes this exists, but I think the 'Bot-ware manufacturers have the market sewn up, and at $0 / hr.

      --
      Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
  22. CPUShare by PenGun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh please. We have cpu time for 10c an hour over at Andrea Arcangeli's CPUShare website:

    http://www.cpushare.com/

      Still experimental for now but soon ...

      I did some math and I will build a server farm if I can get a steady 10c/hr/processor.

          PenGun
        Do What Now

  23. Condor by Isaac-Lew · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why wouldn't a mid- to large-sized organization use something like Condor? Just install it on everyone's (linux or win2k/xp) server/workstation, maybe set some prioritization scripts so that it would use more resources after-hours (when most people are out of the office, but have their systems on anyway), & save themselves $$ instead of paying to have their data on someone else's remote system?

  24. Seti@home by way2trivial · · Score: 3, Funny

    anyone have any idea how much it would cost me to buy the # one spot on boinc?
    Take down NEZ for one day-- that would be sweet

    http://www.boincstats.com/stats/boinc_user_stats.p hp?pr=bo&st=0&to=100

    --
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  25. Hit By a Network Attack? by Heembo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh comon, they are just trying to cover-up getting slashdotted!

    New.com article "Sun Grid hit by network attack" : http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6052968.html

    --
    Horns are really just a broken halo.
  26. Re:Solaris-10 or Java Binaries only? by mondrian · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can run unmodified Linux binaries on Solaris 10 thanks to Janus.