Slashdot Mirror
Cray Wins $52 Million Supercomputer Contract
The Interfacer writes "Cray and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced that Cray has won the contract to install a next-generation supercomputer at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The systems and multi-year services contract, valued at over $52 million, includes delivery of a Cray massively parallel processor supercomputer, code-named 'Hood.'"
Hood is within specs for Vista. A big relief for Cray since they weren't sure it'd meet memmory specs for Vista.
Because of it's power requirements, Cray's only possible customer was the Department of Energy
It's named "Hood"? What are they going to calculate, protein folding in ice cream? ;)
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-237517.html
Even I didn't notice that happen. Apparently Tera bought Cray from SGI and changed the name back for recognition purposes.
H. P. Hood is a beloved ages old dairy company that started outside Boston.
They had giant milk bottle ice cream stands, one stood outside the old Computer Museum on Congress St.
No slight intended concerning ethnic neighborhoods.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so, Brain, but how do we get that many processors into a pair of rubber pants?
Unfortunately this seems to be one of the topics that the slashdot bias and ignorance comes out in full force on.
* Clusters can not compete with supercomputers. They aren't even in the same market space. Cray doesn't make clusters, and clusters have not taken away their business.
* Cray doesn't take off the shelf hardware and sell it as fancy clusters. Actually look into the details of these machines. While processors sometimes are off the shelf much of the surrounding hardware and software is custom.
* This 50 million contract is one of many that cray has. They also just recently in the news got a 200 million dollar contract. They also are a contender in the DARPA HPCS thing. That could be a lot more if they get it. They aren't dieing.
* They aren't owned by SGI any longer. They were bought from SGI by Tera who renamed themselves cray.
* The top500 list is nonsense. It is based off of 1 benchmark (linpack.) That benchmark doesn't stress the interconnect too much and can allow clusters to appear to compete with supercomputers if you manage to ignore all the other factors. The number of teraflops has very little to do with performance. To see a more well rounded and thought out measurement of top systems check out HPCC's website. http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/hpcc_results.cgi
* Bluegene doesn't kick Cray's ass. See the above and then see how it really performs overall. In some areas it does better and in others it just gets destroyed. Depending on the real world problem a full size blue gene may not even be able to perform as well as a much smaller Cray.
If you don't know what you are talking about look it up before posting. Just because it's the common belief doesn't mean there is any truth to it!