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DARPA Awards HPC Contracts To IBM, Cray, Not Sun

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-soup-for-you dept.

snedecor writes "DARPA has awarded a third round of funding for the next-generation petascale computing system. IBM and Cray roughly split the $494M, while Sun, with little track record, received none. This is in spite of Sun's radical proposal for proximity communication."

52 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. UCAN by Stanistani · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can pet a dog, you can pet a cat, but you can't petascale.

    --
    You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
    1. Re:UCAN by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...you can't petascale.

      Maybe you could hug it with your nuclear arms.

    2. Re:UCAN by gbnewby · · Score: 1

      First of all, my personal vanity domain is petascale.org. Really.

      Second: it's nice to see supercomputing covered in Slashdot :)

      Finally: these systems are going to be both revolutionary and evolutionary. The main thing you can predict, is that you can't predict what impact and uses they will have.

    3. Re:UCAN by Korin43 · · Score: 2, Funny

      And in 10 years we'll be like, "They paid $500 million for that?? But it can't even run Halo 10!"

    4. Re:UCAN by Dabido · · Score: 1

      With the way graphics cards are going, screw the computer, the Graphics card can run Halo 10 on its own!

      --
      Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
  2. more likely... by idlake · · Score: 1

    This is in spite of Sun's radical proposal for proximity communication."

    More likely, that was because Sun's radical proposal for proximity communication.

    1. Re:more likely... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      IBM's radical idea was to release whatever product they'll have ready in 2010, but with enough processors to reach petascale. Go Blue! Had Sun offered up Niagara2 @ petascale, then they might have had a chance to win as well.

    2. Re:more likely... by georgewilliamherbert · · Score: 3, Informative

      Niagra and Niagra 2 have lousy floating point performance (1 FPU for entire chip, shared by all the cores). Given that the DARPA project is for FLOPS, Nigra is just about the worst processor one could propose for the project.

      I love the Niagra design; for 90% of what I need done, it does great. It's just terrible at floating point.

      Sometime down the line, past Niagra 2, one could posit a version of such a chip with enough floating point units that it's efficient in FLOPS; it's an obvious upgrade of the current chips. However, that also is not optimal for FLOPS in the HPC regime. HPC is all about hiring enough computer scientists and physicists to micro-optimize the code so that you make close to theoretical maximum efficiency in utilizing the CPU cores. Niagra is all about keeping enough contexts on the chip that you can productively use the time that normal programs spend wasted, waiting for main memory accesses and so on. HPC by definition spends the CS time and effort to avoid that already.

    3. Re:more likely... by SnowZero · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Niagra 1's FP indeed sucks, but I thought they were fixing that for Niagra 2. I heard about an FPU-per-core design being done (maybe that's a later follow-on?).

    4. Re:more likely... by Some+Pig! · · Score: 1

      I thought Niagara 2 is supposed to have more FPUs.

    5. Re:more likely... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      You might find the history of the company that is now called Cray to be interesting. They used to be called TERA before they bought the remains of Cray from SGI. TERA had a CPU that did something like a thread context switch on every memory access and had no data or instruction cache either. I think they called MTA for multi-threaded architecture.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    6. Re:more likely... by joib · · Score: 1

      Cray is actually just about to launch a next generation MTA, the XMT. Interestingly, the processors plug into Opteron sockets and except for the processors themselves all the other hw is from the XT4 (Cray's Opteron-based supercomputer).

    7. Re:more likely... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Looks like this time they got themselves a much sexier name than MTA - Threadstorm.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    8. Re:more likely... by davecb · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sun's HPC contribution is in optical chip interconnects, described (somewaht fluffily) at http://research.sun.com/spotlight/2006/2006-04-07_ Sun_on_HPCS.html

      --
      davecb@spamcop.net
  3. Military applications? by sdBlue · · Score: 2, Interesting
    FTA:
    DARPA, which funds computing and technological projects for the military
    ...
    These computers will be used to simulate global climate changes or the spread of hypothetical epidemics.

    Now, of the two stated applications, which do you think is more interesting to the military? I suppose one could argue defense against bioterror, but it's still kinda scary.
    1. Re:Military applications? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 1

      Well, being that global climate changes could trigger large crop failures, mass human migrations (with their attendant civil wars), changes in sea levels, ports and river navigation and all-around Bad Stuff (TM), I'm guessing the first choice might have more real impact than the second.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:Military applications? by daeg · · Score: 1

      Defense? Who said anything about defense? Pre-emptive strikes are where it's, baby!

      This bio-attack brought to you by IBM.

    3. Re:Military applications? by anzha · · Score: 1

      You might be surprised but the military is VERY interested in climate as well.

      That said, the HPCS program - if continued until completion: whole new COngress coming up here - will produce an HPC platform that will probably end up being used by most HPC sites. Not just DOD ones.

      --
      Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
    4. Re:Military applications? by HAL9000_mirror · · Score: 1

      Don't forget restricted climate change is a scary attack too. There were rumors that US tried this in Vietnam (colossal downpour).
      --Ram

    5. Re:Military applications? by sdBlue · · Score: 1

      I can see how global climate changes affect military activities / create military situations, but I still feel the military is much more interested in the shorter-term (relatively speaking) effects of bioattacks (whether from the offensive or defensive perspective). The former would certainly have more real impact in the longer term, but I don't think we as a country are good at long-term thinking. :)

  4. Re:Where's Google? by Boone^ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google's HPC "innovations" are surely software-based, are they not? Not sure they've done anything in the hardware arena that warrants press releases.

  5. Loosing may be a good thing by renau · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The HPCA program is a "cover" (not so cover) funding to companies. The problem is that it is not so clear that it is even good for them. The reason is that "lots" of additional resources from these companies are also diverted for these projects. Since these machines have a "doubtful" application besides the DARPA contract, I think that it may be better for these companies to invest on research more related to their product or may-be products.

    For example, Sun Labs was in charge of the DARPA project at Sun. They have "invested" 3 years on that. My question is "what do they have to show?".
    They do not have publications on any top computer architecture conference, they do not seem to have anything that may save Sun ass. (At least from
    an architecture point of view)

    This is not such a strange comment, I have head it from people at IBM research itself. Some people there is not sure that winning is the best thing either.

    1. Re:Loosing may be a good thing by lowoddnumber · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Working at Sun I've heard the higher-ups discuss these grants and awards and from what I gather, despite the award money, it is still very expensive for the company. The award money is not enough to fund a competitive entry. IBM definitely has a lot more money to put into the effort than Sun does. Not defending them though. It's a bummer for the company that they didn't get the grant, but I probably agree that losing could be a good thing. Winning would be great for bragging rights and image.

      I really don't know anything.

    2. Re:Loosing may be a good thing by flaming-opus · · Score: 1

      Interesting notion. For Cray it's a no brainer. They only exist in the upper-end of the HPC market.

      For IBM, I'd still say it's a win. If it weren't for some of the early work with blue gene, would there have ever been a cell processor? If their project is more related to power6/7, well those processors are used for the low end of HPC, and for high-end database servers too. Even if the DARPA system requires CPU modifications (VIVA) that don't help the general business user, any advances in memory technology, primary or tertiary storage systems, or networks will help the entire product line. Sun, I'm not sure.

    3. Re:Loosing may be a good thing by guaigean · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Since these machines have a "doubtful" application besides the DARPA contract, I think that it may be better for these companies to invest on research more related to their product or may-be products.

      You may want to rethink that. The number of products developed out of DARPA initiatives which have become mainstream are astounding. For now, yes, they may be specialized devices, but the research driven by these funding sources is responsible for home technology 10 years from now. Just because you can't see a use for it, doesn't mean it won't affect you.

      --
      Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
    4. Re:Loosing may be a good thing by Alomex · · Score: 1

      For example, Sun Labs was in charge of the DARPA project at Sun. They have "invested" 3 years on that. My question is "what do they have to show?".

      erh.... $50 million in cash from the last round of funding?

      http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_23 /b3886007.htm

  6. Hmmm, more jobs at Cray? by schiefaw · · Score: 1

    I used to work at Cray (SGI vintage) as a contractor. It would be nice to think that some jobs are opening up there.

    --
    Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
  7. A win for Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    A win for IBM is a win for Linux. Too bad for Sun, but congrats to Linux.

    1. Re:A win for Linux by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This was modded funny, but it's an interesting point. I've been able to tour a couple big HPC type facilities and I've spoken to some academic types who were involved in other projects. From what I can tell, the HPC community is all over Linux. Linux is pretty much the de facto platform of choice, for all sorts of reasons. I understand that a lot of people in the life sciences were enamored of Apple's later-model PowerPC hardware for HPC applications, but even they would tend to reformat and install Yellow Dog. Wouldn't it be a shame if Sun got overlooked for this contract because it insisted on pushing Solaris?

      And then again, might it not be a shame again ... because OpenSolaris is nearly as free (in every sense) these days as Linux, and it has some great technology in it, including a battle-hardened networking stack.

      A poster above questioned whether the companies that get awarded these DARPA contracts really see any benefit from it. But a major government HPC contract running on Solaris could potentially be a big marketing boost for Sun ... too bad it came to naught.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    2. Re:A win for Linux by mcrbids · · Score: 1

      OpenSolaris is nearly as free (in every sense) these days as Linux, and it has some great technology in it, including a battle-hardened networking stack.

      This statement implies that Linux's networking stack is not "battle-hardened" or at least not AS "battle-hardened". WTF? Linux is used on routers for a reason - and it's not because of the freecell game!

      Trying to imply that Linux's networking stack is anything but quite mature is just idiocy.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    3. Re:A win for Linux by fa_king · · Score: 1

      It is only implying that Solaris has a battle-hardened networking stack and is free also. Linux is a great kernel, but Solaris has a longer track record in the industry. Linux has come a long way fast, if Solaris was to GPL I think that both Linux and Solaris would benefit.

    4. Re:A win for Linux by riscguru · · Score: 1

      Uuuhh...... what you don't realize is that this is NOT a Linux project. This platform will be running AIX and GPFS. Insiders within High Performance Computing are seeing what the commercial side of the world has known. At the end of the day, Linux isn't cheaper than any commercially available solution. Sure admins ARE cheaper, the hardware is cheaper, but at the end of the day, HPC Linux solutions CAN compete with IBM's AIX solution only when running ONE program through the stack across the entire cluster. This is fine for sites which have one user running one program across the entire cluster (such as the TOP500 linpack.) But the average site has many users scheduling many different workloads across many different groups of nodes. These sites are seeing a sharp contrast between Linux and AIX.

    5. Re:A win for Linux by RogerWilco · · Score: 1

      In our HPC project it has been quite essential that the OS was (a flavour) Linux. We rewrote several drivers and replaced the ones from the manufacturer to boost performance for our application, in some cases getting an almost 10 fold increase. (I didn't do this myself, I work more on the user applications)

      This would have been a lot harder with a closed OS.

      --
      RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
  8. Re:Where's Google? by SnowZero · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google are experts at scaling out, not up. Running applications to serve 10000 users at the same time is different from executing one massive program. The main way in which Google and HPC (High Performance Computing, i.e. Supercomputers) overlap is in enormous file systems.

  9. Re:Where's Google? by flaming-opus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google's advances are very far from traditional HPC applications like fluid dynamics, weather forcasting, solid body simulations, waveguides, thermal reactions, particle dispersion, oil discovery, etc. Google does data mining, and transactional processing. The very problem that the darpa HPCS program addresses, is that the bulk of the HPC systems sold in the US are just clusters of off-the-sheld database/web-optimized servers. It turns out that these clusters don't deliver very high levels of efficiency, either computationally, or from a power/cooling perspective. Google rolls their own servers, but they still fit into the database/web-optimized server camp. Their software acheivements are all in the data-mining category.

    This is not to say that the defense department doesn't need lots of high-end database servers. They use them by the truckload. However, the need for advances in this area are being met by the hardware and software markets. Market forces were not, however, stimulating truly interesting research at the high end of the HPC marketplace. Thus the DoD needed to put together this competition.

  10. Nuclear Simulation Need Complex Cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    The fact of the matter is that Sun's "strength" is in building multicore processors that combine hordes of simple, weak cores. These processors are suited for processing, say, web-based commercial transactions. A web billing server typically runs hundreds of thousands of threads; each thread services one customer among the hundreds of thousands of customers submitting their credit-card information to buy the services sold by, for example, Priceline.com.

    This kind of processor is not suited for the high-performance scientific applications, like simulating a nuclear explosion, that DARPA typically runs.

    By contrast, IBM is one of the 3 remaining American companies that still makes general-purpose, complex, and powerful cores for crunching scientific applications. The other two companies are AMD and Intel.

    Not surprisingly, IBM is always highly competitive in bidding to be the supplier of computing machines to the military. Right now, an IBM system is coordinating the broad-based anti-missile system defending North America.

    Sun does have a competitive complex processor: the SPARC64, designed and built by Japanese engineers. However, DARPA was likely seeking only bids using American technology. SPARC64 would not have met the domestic-content qualifications.

  11. Re:Yes, yes, it is possible... by flaming-opus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Someone else will probably license Sun's proximity communication technology at some point, but it might be the graphics card makers. The proximity communication stuff lets you hook together multiple chips, almost as if they were part of the same die, using a bunch of capacitor-like plates in the chips. This could be very useful for putting some amount of memory (almost) on the cpu die, and putting a very wide bus between that memory and the processor. Both IBM and Cray currently use very expensive ceramic multichip modules to connect multiple dies together, and they are still somewhat limited in the number of connections that can be attached through the modules.

    Apart from that, I don't really know what advances they had. Solaris can scale to 100 processors fairly well, but both IBM and Cray have been working on scalable operating systems for systems with tens of thousands of CPUs. The rock processor would likely be a lot faster than sun's current processors, but it's an incremental advance for microprocessors. Both IBM and Cray are working on more radical technology with FPGAs, vector CPUs, highly treaded designs, and sophisticated coprocessors, and very scalable interconnects.

  12. Where was HP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So, IBM and Cray took the prize... Sun lost. And where is the other major US HPC vendor HP? Did they even enter the competition? Do they have anything new to say?

    1. Re:Where was HP? by Winter+Lightning · · Score: 2, Informative

      H-P and SGI were knocked-out at the end of round one; Cray, IBM & Sun were selected
      for round two.

    2. Re:Where was HP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      HP couldn't figure out how to sell printer ink for a supercomputer. Thus, they have no way of making any money on it.

  13. You forgot some by iendedi · · Score: 2, Funny
    By contrast, IBM is one of the 3 remaining American companies that still makes general-purpose, complex, and powerful cores for crunching scientific applications. The other two companies are AMD and Intel.
    You forgot Freescale, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, geesh, there are actually quite a few others...

    Once you start searching for US chip design and manufacturing firms, you realize that there are tons of them that produce silicon that is general purpose. You only listed the three biggest.
    --

    It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    1. Re:You forgot some by sauron_of_mordor · · Score: 1

      No he said "powerfull" and "scientific" which eliminated the others you mentioned.

  14. Misspelled and Wrong FPU Information by Smackintosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's Niagara

    Niagara II (T2) has one floating point unit per core...so for a T2 outfit with all cores, eight FPUs.

    1. Re:Misspelled and Wrong FPU Information by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      It's Niagara

      Maybe he meant Viagra.

      I wonder if I could work Sun into this someow, something about putting it where the Sun don't shine....

      --
      Infuriate left and right
  15. What about Fortress? by andrew+cooke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fortress, the language being developed by a bunch of people led by Guy Steele, was funded as part of the HPCS effort. This means that DARPA is going with IBM or Cray's language (X10 for IBM, Chapel from Cray). According to a press release quoted at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2063043,00.as p (but not available at http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/index.xml) the work will continue, but how likely is it to succeed?

    Guy Steele gave an excellent talk at OOPSLA on Fortress - the slides are at http://research.sun.com/projects/plrg/PLDITutorial Slides9Jun2006.pdf - I thought it was pretty impressive.

    The groups's site is at http://research.sun.com/projects/plrg/

    --
    http://www.acooke.org
  16. Long term vendor by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    IBM has been a large governmental contractor from the dark ages... No suprise it isnt continuing. ( and no, that wasnt a slam... there are advantages to working with the same companies you are used to doing business with )

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  17. Re:Where is the WTO??? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    Anybody saying "Eurabia" should be forced into the body of a Palestinian in Israel about to get killed by an Israeli tank.

    Orally? Or perhaps through the palestinian's belly button?

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  18. A beowulf cluster of Cell processors! by alchemy101 · · Score: 1

    DARPA must be simulating giant enemy crabs (or even more appropriately, real-time weapon changing)!

  19. Re:Where is the WTO??? by Stormwatch · · Score: 1

    How about, instead, an israeli about to get killed by a palestinian suicide bomber?

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  20. Re:Where is the WTO??? by Marcos+Eliziario · · Score: 1

    I am not asking for the right to compete for those defense contracts, and I was wondering where did I said that. I am telling that this HPC contracts are a smart way to shove billions of dollar of subside for american computer companies. Basically, the US taxpayer is paying for private companies research under the cover of a very broad and vague "Defense Contract" for HPC computing. So, basically, I am claiming for the right to over-tax those products when I import them, because of that subside. It's just international trade, you don't need to get that upset, fat boy.

    --
    Your ad could be here!
  21. Re:Where is the WTO??? by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1

    Personally I was thinking freaky alien technology.

    --
    Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
  22. Re:Where is the WTO??? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    How about, instead, an israeli about to get killed by a palestinian suicide bomber?

    1) That is reserved for people who say "the united states of israel."
    2) How funny it is that your sig is about banning circumcision and yet you are a knee-jerker on the israel-vs-the-palestinians issue. Don't stand to close to the mohell.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.