Supercomputer On the Cheap

jbrodkin writes "You don't need Ivy League-type cash to get a supercomputer anymore. Organizations with limited financial resources are snatching up IBM supercomputers now that Big Blue has lowered the price of Blue Gene/L. Alabama-Birmingham and other universities that previously couldn't afford such advanced technology are using supercomputers to cure diseases at the protein level and to solve equally challenging problems. IBM dropped the price of the Blue Gene/L to $800K late last year before releasing a more powerful model, Blue Gene/P, last month. Sales of Blue Gene/L have more than doubled since then, bringing supercomputing into more corners of the academic and research worlds."

Comments

From TFA

[DaveCar]

At its highest price, the Blue Gene/L cost $1.3 million per rack

Pamela Anderson eat your heart out!

Re:From TFA

[IBBoard]

And knowing most super computers, both would be far too large, ugly, and filled with silicon.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

s/yard/departmental supercomputing facility/
s/teach/allocate compute time to/

ok, maybe not as catchy

Re:From TFA

[mwvdlee]

On the plus side; most supercomputers are fully hot swappable, try doing that with women.

Re:From TFA

[Gazzonyx]

On the plus side; most supercomputers are fully hot swappable, try doing that with women. My experience says the hotswap turns to a dual cold shoulder; It has something to do with an error when malloc fails to make sufficient room to store correct name, or a null pointer is dereferenced when trying to remember name. Oh well. There's still hope.

while(1)
{
myGirl = myGirl -> cuteFriend;
delete myGirl -> last;
}
myGirl -> isHappyEnding = !(myGirl -> isHappyEnding);

Re:From TFA

[Assassin bug]

Is this in the voice of Elma Jetson?

Re:From TFA

[Frumious Wombat]

Let's not forget that with Pam, you only got one rack. IBM gives you *several*.

Of course, they're all blue, but picky, picky.

Re:From TFA

[kalirion]

I'm sure Pamela's rack has gotten her way more than $1.3 mil.

Re:From TFA

[hitmark]

sorry, i value my life to much for that.

Re:From TFA

[MarsDefenseMinister]

I know there has to be a joke regarding the bit about "snatching up supercomputers" and it would belong in this thread.

Re:From TFA

[suggsjc]

It appears that you have some problems with your logic as you will just stay in that while loop indefinitely (yeah right). Here is the updated code, and man is it complicated! But if you learn one thing from this, its that it only gets more expensive...

// initialize variables
myGirl = arg[0];
acctbal = arg[1];
girl_count = 1;

while (!screwed) {
date_cost = 20;
while (!bored && !dumped) {
date_success = date(date_cost);

if (date_success) { date_cost = date_cost * 1.75; }
else { dumped = true; }

bonus = will_have_sex() ? 1000 : 0;
attractiveness = (myGirl->personality * myGirl->hotness^2) + bonus / (date_cost * this->fear_of_commitment);

if (attractiveness < 1) { bored = true; }
}
myGirl = myGirl -> cuteFriend;
delete myGirl -> last;

if (date_cost ^ girl_count < acctbal ) {
screwed = true;
}
girl_count++;
}

function date(cost) {
if (cost > acctbal) {
return false;
}
else {
acctbal = acctbal - cost;
return true;
}
}

function will_have_sex {
if (acctbal > 1000000 || date_cost > 250) { return true; }
else { return false; }
}

Re:From TFA

[Gazzonyx]

Haha, thanks, I needed that laugh. And, yes, the infinite loop was there on purpose - just beyond the function's reach, 1 line away might have been a million ;)

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can do that with women. However, it's just like mainframes: the more you pay, the more features you get, hot-swappable included. If you are a multi-millionaire, you can hot-swap women all day long, trading in a "broken down" model for a fresh, new one. Of course, just like big iron, this costs large sums of money. Whereas if you take the budget option, you are stuck with one version that gradually eats up your spare cash in maintenance. You can try hot-swapping her for a less maintenance intensive version, but it is definitely not a supported feature and you are more than likely to have something break. The things that will break are all your possessions when she throws them out the window onto the lawn. Also, if you do try and hot-swap a version where it isn't supported, don't be surprised to find out that you have been hot-swapped in return.

"Supercomputer"

[pzs]

Anybody can have a supercomputer on the cheap because the definition of supercomputer changes every 3 seconds.

Peter

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Ginger Unicorn]

i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it? Weren't the US government going to restrict exports on them as they were considered munitions or something daft like that. Same thing for old Mac G5 as i recall. Might be a stupid urban myth though.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[cerberusss]

i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it?

Hah! These old and heavy IBM PS/2's are deadly weapons once loaded into my bolt thrower. Imagine using Blue Gene and my goal of World Domination is coming nearer.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[BrianHursey]

I think the super computers are a thing of the past. Now days clusters are the way to go. Much cheaper and flexible.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[solevita]

I think you mean that anybody can have an old supercomputer. The ever changing definition means staying on top requires a little more than $400,000.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[morgan_greywolf]

Might be a stupid urban myth though.

Nope, at least on the PS2 count (I don't know about Mac G5s). Back in 2000, Saddam Hussein was purchasing Sony PS2s by the thousands, which were then banned from export, due to them being classified as munitions.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[clickclickdrone]

>they were considered munitions
Certainly true that firing a PS2 out of a big gun was about the best thing you could do with them.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[f97tosc]

Anybody can have a supercomputer on the cheap because the definition of supercomputer changes every 3 seconds.

Although presumably the definition is revised up in terms of performance... It is not like everyone is sitting on old slow computers which suddenly become supercomputers by definition.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[hurting now]

Actually it was their components which were supposed to be able to be used in missile systems... not the game system as a weapon.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Calinous]

Altivec on the G5 processor could do quite a bit of calculations - no wonder if they were banned for that performance

Re:"Supercomputer"

[jcgf]

Every time there's an article on supercomputers someone brings up clusters. As has been pointed out before, a cluster only works for easily parallelizable problems where you can divide your problem into many subproblems that can be divided amongst your nodes. This is not a problem with supercomputers as you have much faster communications amongst processors (ie they're not just cheaply connected with cat5 ethernet cable like beowolf) and thus you can solve problems on a supercomputer much faster in this case.

Supercompters aren't going anywhere fast.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[hackstraw]

I think the super computers are a thing of the past. Now days clusters are the way to go. Much cheaper and flexible.

Yes, no, maybe.

I guess the best definition of a cluster vs a "real" supercomputer is distributed memory connected via some kind of interconnect vs a large shared memory SMP. A blue gene is a distributed memory system connected via interconnects. The Cray XT4 and XT3 are distributed memory systems connected via interconnects. Actually, I think that SGI is the only guy that really makes large quasi shared memory SMP boxes. They are a ccNUMA architecture that kind of blurs the distinction between the two.

AFAIK, large SMP systems are great when you have when you have a large static DB of info that needs to be shared by all compute nodes. Again, AFAIK, this is what those who design things like abombs where the plasma states of heat, temperature, pressure, etc are known beforehand, and these things need to be looked up as you step though the simlation of the chain reaction.

Fast forward to 2007 and beyond, and like most oppositely opposed arguments, the "real" answer is a combination of the two and not either one in absolute. Today, big computer systems are a hybrid of shared and distrubuted memory systems. The shared part comes within each compute node where almost 100% of the time there is more than one CPU or CPU core inside of the box that shares the memory inside of the box, and then distributed memory between these little SMP guys.

I see this latter arrangement being dominant for quite some time, with the number of CPU cores increasing per compute node over time.

Then again, you could also just look at these things as prototypes of future desktop computers where boys just like more expensive toys.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[clickclickdrone]

I was talking PS2 as in IBM late 80's PCs. PS2 consoles are/were OK-ish, given that they are made by Sony.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[warpSpeed]

It is not like everyone is sitting on old slow computers which suddenly become supercomputers by definition.

Well there goes my plans to bring forth my dark legions of 486's and P75's...

An one know where I can get a bunch of ISA NICs and 10 Mbit hubs?

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Rhys]

Clusters are supercomputers. Supercomputers are clusters. The only question is what purpose your machine is built for. Some problems aren't tightly coupled (or your machine is small) and so an interconnect like Gig-E is fine. Some problems are and you want one of the specialty interconnects: Myrinet, Infiniband, Quadrics Elan, or possibly even 10Gig-E.

Any machine you see in the top500 list that mentions any of those interconnects is a cluster. I don't really think you can classify #7 and #8 on that list as "not a supercomputer."

Even BG or the Cray XT series are really just clusters with a custom vendor-supplied fast interconnect (or interconnects).

Re:"Supercomputer"

[PingPongBoy]

i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it? Weren't the US government going to restrict exports on them as they were considered munitions or something daft like that. Same thing for old Mac G5 as i recall. Might be a stupid urban myth though

FYI Apple computers can be used to make a supercomputer. The MACH5 is number 50 in the TOP500.

Supercomputers are cheap, but many other products aren't getting cheaper at the same rate. A pack of toilet paper might be practically free if prices dropped as fast. However, who would stay in the toilet paper business. Computers will be cheap as long as money can be made. But there should come a day when anyone can make their own computer from raw materials, instructions posted online, and specialized power tools.

Having more powerful computers is tantamount to having more power. If personal computers become more and more powerful, catching up with yesterday's supercomputers as they exist today, people will be able to construct various items for themselves, including computers and machinery merely by selecting a few options and clicking OK. We'll wait with bated breath what happens to prices of common commodities.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[cerelib]

Clusters are supercomputers. Supercomputers are clusters.
It might be nitpicking, but I think it would be more appropriate to say, "Clusters can be supercomputers. Supercomputers can be clusters." Because I can make a cluster that is not a supercomputer and make a supercomputer that is not a cluster.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Schnoogs]

PS2 = Playstation 2 They were actually classified as a supercomputer

Re:"Supercomputer"

[suggsjc]

Supercompters aren't going anywhere fast. Isn't that an oxymoron?

Re:"Supercomputer"

[dmpyron]

Not so much as as a supercomputer. They were classified as a munition and export controlled by ITARS. Funny thing is, Motorola was fabbing them overseas. I did sysadmin for the design for test group. Of course, encryption was once controlled by ITARS. I have the "this t-shirt is a munition" and the code to do the actual encryption. Along with pictures of me wearing it around the world.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[cerberusss]

Yeah I got the reference. I was trying to be kidding. And failed horribly.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Schnoogs]

Whoops...my bad! That's what I get for responding before having my coffee!

Re:"Supercomputer"

[Wavicle]

Oh come on, that WND article doesn't pass muster. Most notably, Sony is not an American company and Saddam could have easily acquired his PS2s in Japan, Taiwan or Europe. They didn't need to do a special ban on PS2 transfers to Iraq, Iraq was already an export controlled country. Reading that article is laughable... Iraqi weapons scientists need PS2's to browse the web? How could they have published that with a straight face?

As to whether this was motivated by the PS2 being a supercomputer... rubbish. The whole "PS2 is a supercomputer" thing was little more than guerrilla marketing.

Re:"Supercomputer"

[cerberusss]

I like coffee too :-) It makes me do stupid things much faster :-)

Re:"Supercomputer"

[SeanAhern]

Clusters of independent workstations do not preclude you from using a fast interconnect. I've designed and purchased (or helped my employer purchase) any number of clusters, including one that made it on the Top500 list when it was sited next to ASCI BlueGene/L. The most recent cluster I'm purchasing has an InfiniBand 4X DDR interconnect, sufficient for many supercomputing applications. You are in no way restricted to embarrassingly parallel problems with cluster computing.

Re:Try this!!!!

[DaveCar]

Listen to me, you little puke. One of these days, I'm going to catch you, and I'm going to carve my name on your back with an ice pick!

Beowulf!

[rgravina]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Re:Beowulf!

[LifesABeach]

I was trying to think of the configuration of a $800K Beowulf Cluster, what would the performance comparison be to the IBM Gene?

ivy league cash?

[entartete]

are there any ivy league schools that actually have one of these? I don't recall seeing any blue gene systems very high up in the top500.org list at any of the eight ivies.

Re:ivy league cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very least, Princeton and Harvard have one... MIT, too, but I'm not sure if they're considered 'Ivy League'.

Re:ivy league cash?

[necro81]

If you search through the whole top500 list, you'll find these Ivy Leaguers with Blue Gene computers:

#93 Harvard
#382 Princeton

But, there are plenty of other US schools on the list with Blue Gene computers (and a many outside the U.S. as well):

#5 SUNY Stony Brook
#7 Renssellaer Polytechnic
#63 California-San Diego #374 Boston University
#376 Iowa State
#379 MIT
#383 Alabama-Birmingham

Re:ivy league cash?

[Andy Dodd]

In most cases, they bought supercomputers before IBM started making "cheap mass market" units. i.e. they don't have BlueGenes because they have custom one-offs.

I know Cornell Theory Center has a few supercomputers that were top of the line when installed, but I think they're getting a bit old nowadays.

Yup, Cornell has dropped off of the top500 for now. They held the #6 rank in 1995, were last on the top500 list with a ranking of 496 in 2006, and last held a top 100 ranking of 49 back in mid-2003. Just like these new BlueGene systems will drop off of the top500 list after 4-5 years.

Re:Try this!!!!

[godfra]

Agreed.. this is Slashdot, no-one's dumb enough to click your stupid link.

Normal business...

[IBBoard]

Isn't this just normal business? "We're about to bring out the P series, so lets sell off the L series 'cheap'".

Having said that, I don't suppose nearly half price is that bad an offer, even if $800K isn't exactly 'cheap'!

Re:Normal business...

[DaveCar]

Maybe it's supercomputerspam (tag anyone?).

What with the IBM Saves $250M Running Linux On Mainframes story earlier it looks like IBM is pimping out their wares here on Slashdot.

They are probably behind the milfy bewbs too (is it too hard to put those two word into a lameness filter?)

Re:Normal business...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Nearly half price of an over-priced model isn't so good. BG/L is interesting for sure, but of limited use in many domains due to the memory constraints. For $800K, you probably get 2K processors (each at 700 Mhz), whereas for that cost you can probably get 1K x86 processor 'cores' and much more memory. Applications might not scale as well, but overall performance on many applications would be better. (Scaling at 50% of 10 whatevers is better than 80% of 2 whatevers)

That said, I'd love a BG/L, and anyone who gets one now is going to have an advantage on designing for that sort of architecture, so porting to a BG/P should be painless and probably will bring plenty of rewards.

Re:Normal business...

[Whiteox]

Yeah well I bet that it doesn't come with a monitor.
I've seen these sort of deals before, and they'll only sell you the box and the monitor, keyboard and mouse is all extra.
What a bummer!

Obligatory

[JuanCarlosII]

But will it run Linux?

Re:Obligatory

[Tap13579]

Will it blend? That is the question.

Re:Obligatory

[djdavetrouble]

Will it blend? That is the question.

no.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/zeptoos/

Stanford will always have the biggest

[bblboy54]

Stanford still has the the best idea.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[bunratty]

Distributed processing is fine for "embarrassingly parallel" problems where the compute nodes don't need to communicate with each other. However, many problems solved by supercomputers or large clusters need communication between the compute nodes, so aren't amenable to distributed solutions.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Nefarious Wheel]

A friend of mine once ran the massively parallel supercomputer centre at LaTrobe. He told me of how the transputer-based Connection Machine would run blindingly fast in parallel, only to have the lights slowly wink out until one small corner of the display was the only thing lit. He said it was disappointing, and rather funny, how parallel jobs tended to go linear over time.

Yep, sometimes you just need a few processors running very fast cycles.

Sigh... we miss you, Seymour Cray. Wish you hadn't taken your Jeep out that day.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Frumious Wombat]

That's why it's a pity that SGI (much as I dislike Irix) got so thoroughly thumped. Those 8-proc O2000 nodes connected into a distributed shared memory system which looked like a single, flat, address space for many purposes were nice machines, and relatively simple to program. Affordable BlueGenes, Altixes, and E25Ks (affordable being a relative term) are still useful due to their simpler to use shared design, over purely distributed code.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[bunratty]

That's the exact opposite end of the spectrum from embarrassingly parallel problems. In embarrassingly parallel problems you have so little data dependency that tasks can run independently or nearly independently. In you friend's case, the tasks were so interdependent that all the tasks were waiting on one task to finish, so there was nearly no speedup from adding more processors.

The bottom line is that the best solution to some problems is a grid of loosely connected computers. The best solution to others is one very fast processor. In between, there is SMP, where there are many processors in one computer, and clusters, where the processors are connected through a high-speed network. There is no one best solution, as implied by the original poster. The best solution depends on the problem to be solved.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Beatlebum]

The Connection Machine used up to 64K 1-bit processing elements configured to work lock-step with a single control unit (SIMD).

The transputer was something completely different. It was a 32-bit processor with four high-speed connections to other transputers. This could be used to implement a MIMD processing network.

The CM scaled well on data parallel applications, the transputer was more suited to course-grained parallelism.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[mikael]

That's why it's a pity that SGI (much as I dislike Irix)

That's why they got thumped. Every UNIX vendor had a slightly different flavour of UNIX. It meant that developers had to maintain separate builds of their application for each platform. The platforms which
were the hardest/most expensive to develop for, were the ones that fell off the bottom of the annual budget.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Frumious Wombat]

The confused business plan which placed them squarely in the path of bigger, more established, and better funded competitors didn't help either. Then there was buying Cray, and selling the SMP Sparc based system to Sun, because they couldn't figure out how to make money off it. Sun called it an E10K, and made a mint (and continued to develop it). SGI became roadkill.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[SeanAhern]

Why are people equating "distributed" with "no communication"? Distributed computing certainly allows internode communication and goes far beyond embarrassingly parallel problems. The architectures of grid-based computing reduce the ability to do cross-task communication. But there's nothing about a distributed architecture that would preclude an algorithm that requires parallel communication. In fact, I've deployed many machines and software systems on distributed architectures that require collective parallel communication.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[mikael]

Then there was buying Cray, and selling the SMP Sparc based system to Sun,

I thought SGI were forced to split Cray up in order to conform to anti-monopoly legislation.

Though, I still find it hard to believe that SGI's original corporate headquarters (Building 20) became a
computer history museum.

When Sun said they were going to make SGI history, they weren't kidding.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Frumious Wombat]

I'll have to look into that, as I always heard, including from SGI-types, that they didn't want the underpowered Sparc system in their lineup, so they dumped it for cash.

Sun can be aggressive and boastful, but periodically right.

Re:Stanford will always have the biggest

[Nefarious Wheel]

You are right, CM did not use Transputers. I'm afraid I suffered a collision in long-term storage there.

I'm the laughing gnome, you can't catch me

[Dogtanian]

At its highest price, the Blue Gene/L cost $1.3 million per rack Pamela Anderson eat your heart out! my rack is bigger than yours it brings the researchers to the yard i could teach you but i'd have to charge... *dances* I hear that David Bowie has a thing for Blue Gene computers:

"Blue Jean^wGene, I just met a supercomputer named Blue Gene
Blue Gene, She got a camouflaged face and no money"
Remember, they always let you down when you need `em"

(Guess IBM's reliability sucks, then...)

"Oh Blue Gene
Is heaven any sweeter than Blue Gene?
She got a one-petaflop 294,912-processor, 72-rack system configuration harnessed to a high-speed, optical network,
She got a turned up nose..."

For what? Supercomputers do only one job

[freedom_india]

Supercomputers and Mainframes are for totally different purposes.
A supercomp will do one and only one job parallely to finish it off much faster than any other computer.
A M/F can handle multiple jobs at the same time with lesser speed, but with considerable stability.

For many companies, one S/390 running OS/390 or even an AS/400 (not related) is more than enough for their entire Notes setup.

A supercomputer cannot be used to do that 24/7.

They are fast racecars which cannot race outside of circuit.

Re:For what? Supercomputers do only one job

[blake3737]

They are fast racecars which cannot race outside of circuit.
Are you trying to tell me I can take my Mainframe offroading? If I do this, can YOU be the one to tell my admin why his precious is covered in mud and burned clutch smell?

Re:For what? Supercomputers do only one job

[jd]

You'll be fine. Just remember, fuel should use a reliable delivery protocol and not UDP, and on no account use roofnet for a rollcage.

Re:For what? Supercomputers do only one job

[Rhys]

What are you talking about, 'only one job'? We run an average of 30-40 jobs on the local supercomputer I manage at any given time. Each job has their own chunk of nodes they run on. We run the machine at an average of 85% load all the time (actually more like 90-95% load when used, plus a few hours of 0% use maintenance each week). We do have failures in individual nodes fairly often, but what do you expect when you've got over 6k dimms in a room?

You're right they are different, but your impression of how a supercomputer actually runs is way off.

Taking about supercomputers...

[zeromorph]

Wow moderators, since when are old lame jokes redundant? (He's the first to post our beloved Beowulf-phraseme in this discussion.)

And he's even right, clusters are the most frequent architecture in the TOP500:

373 systems are labeled as clusters, making this the most common architecture in the TOP500 with a stable share of 74.6 percent.

Yes it does

[DrSkwid]

and Eric's been running Plan 9 From Bell Labs and Inferno on the one he has access to at IBM.

http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/

academic and research? try finance

[Gothmolly]

These days, $800K for a supercomputer is going to be snapped up by financial institutions far faster than academic and research. Didn't Mitsubishi just close its research plant? Banks and financial companies DEVOUR data, they're the real customers for this sort of thing. It's nice to speculate on the Folding@Home numbers you'd get, but these things are going to be used to make real money.

Re:academic and research? try finance

[locokamil]

If the price goes even lower, perhaps they will. I find it difficult to see this happening though: the financial firm I work for has swung from supercomputer to linux clusters, and is showing no signs of going back. The TCO for a bunch of linux blades is just so much lower than a supercomputer... and because banks are so conscious of their bottom lines, they usually don't improve things if they are already working.

Re:academic and research? try finance

[Sobrique]

Pfft, the amount of money I've seen wasted in a financial organisation who I have done work for, is ... well embarassing really. Their spending on IT is pretty impressive, because they're looking for all manner of degrees of performance and resilience.

No, the real reason they won't go for one of these, is that the project manager signing the approvals doesn't understand why a shared memory supercomputer isn't the same as a big stack of server blades. And what he'd do with one if they got one.

Re:academic and research? try finance

[locokamil]

I agree that even well-run banks waste money at times-- but that wastage (at least at my firm) is on the client-relations side. Backend departments like IT, however, are't nearly as profligate because in the end, they're cost centers, while client relations can potentially lead to additional revenue for the firm.

That said, if the need for supercomputer-level parallelization and power crops up, I (gasp) actually trust my bosses to know exactly how and why to use them: one of them worked with Cray Research back when Seymour Cray was coming up with the Cray-1. :)

Re:academic and research? try finance

[kestasjk]

Probably a stupid question; what do financial institutions need the processing power for?

Re:academic and research? try finance

[rvw14]

... and because banks are so conscious of their bottom lines, they usually don't improve things if they are already working.

So that is why a multi-billion dollar bank still keeps the pens on chains at the counter!

hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

not counting floor space and people costs...

From TFA: At a price of $1.3 million, one Blue Gene/P supercomputing rack can perform 13.9 trillion operations per second and 350 million operations per watt.

So ... 13,900,000 million op/s at 350 million op/Watt comes to 39.714 kW power consumption.

Average US 2007 industrial cost per kWhr = $0.0616 (random doe site)

39.714 KW * 24 hr/day * 365 day/year * $.0616 kWhr = $21,430.31 / year in electricity.

Re:hmm...

[matfud]

Now multiply that by about 2.5 to account for the cooling, and add in a few mil for the building to put it in + a bit more for some people to run it + a bit more for the people to develop the apps for it and you are about set.

So yes the electricity bill is huge but only about the same cost as one of the people you employ to use it.

Re:hmm...

[Anpheus]

So it costs them less per year than the same number of interns it would take to do it or trying to get an Indian prodigy via H1-B that can do the same thing.

How are these named?

[RandoX]

The previous one was Blue Gene/L and the current one is Blue Gene/P. Was there a Blue Gene/M-Blue Gene/O, and they just weren't released as production configurations?

Re:How are these named?

[777v777]

L stood for "Light", as in not quite the full heavy BlueGene we will build in the future. It is not just a letter.

JUST IN TIME!!

[armodude]

FOR RUNNING VISTA the way it was meant to be run!!!

Re:JUST IN TIME!!

[armodude]

actually i have, and i just got word that the Vista rating system gave it a 4.99 Apperantly the perfect 5 score is only a theoretical number that is meant to get users to endlessly upgrade to new systems and sell more licenses

Re:JUST IN TIME!!

[Ross D Anderson]

Sorry, thats a lie: See here an average of around 5.7

That's nothing....

[E 99]

If $800,000 is still too pricey for you, you can get a Cray supercomputer on eBay for $800:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Cray-J90-Supercomputer-1-CPU-2 -Memory-Modules-J-90_W0QQitemZ8816248638QQihZ014QQ categoryZ162QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

Re:That's nothing....

[afidel]

And here's two whole ones currently listed for $51 (though reserve's not met). Shipping on 3tons has to be pretty expensive, not to mention powering them =)

Don't feed the trolls

[Lucas123]

Feeding trolls can be a dangerous business as they will eat most anything, from garbage to fine cuisine. And, once they get a taste from your hand, they'll come back for more. It's best to keep them starved, cold and shivering underneath their bridges.

Re:I'm the laughing gnome, - SGI Octane Songs

[Hollinger]

This reminds me of the ill-fated SGI Octane promotional songs from the mid-to-late 90's.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/sgi/inde x.html

I'm going to avoid a direct link to the MP3s just to be nice to the host, but here's the first stanza of one of the songs:

"I Have a Dream"
I have a dream
and its two CPUs
What this will mean
Is no more desktop blues
Modeling and rendering
Designing analyzing
Just pick any two
I have a dream
and its two CPUs

As an SGI fan, I got a kick out of these. :-)

It's UAB

[Anonymous Coward]

Only out of town sports writers call it Alabama-Birmingham.

Re:It's UAB

[erzeszut]

Amen. It would be nice to see the /. story corrected, as the Network World article uses the university's preferred name. Calling UAB "Alabama-Birmingham" is like calling UCLA "California-Los Angeles."

supercomputer now 100+ teraflops?

[peter303]

This has been a marketing ploy for decades: calling a supercomputer from a few years ago a cheap supercomputer. Well, its no longer a supercomputer.

In the early 1980s a 60 megaflop Cray-1 defined "supercomputer" and the video processing in my cell phone is faster than that.

The new prize is a petaflop, with anything within a magnitude of that range a true super- at least for this year.

Re:supercomputer now 100+ teraflops?

[xeniast]

My Mac Pro 2.66 Ghz runs at 30 gigaflops!

Blue Gene vs PVM

[jshriverWVU]

I've been to several universities and I think it's safe to say all had some form of "supercomputer" for their CompSci department. A lot of it has to deal with how you define a super computer. Granted 15+ years ago Supercomputer meant Cray or IBM, but since Beowulf and the concept of using inexpensive parts to form clusters. MOsix/PVM/MVP, etc are all technologies that can allow people to use "the old labs computers" as a cluster, or get funding for some new hardware that's becomes a cluster.

It's a lot cheaper to buy 20-30 regular computers than a 1million cray or IBM "supercomputer".

Re:Blue Gene vs PVM

[Sobrique]

There's a reason for that. It's because a cluster is just not the same as a shared memory supercomputer.

it's all very well to dig up OpenMP, PVM, MOSIX and the like, but the fact remains that they're only suitable for certain classes of problem.

Processor cycles are cheap, but that's not why your supercomputer is expensive. The reason it's expensive is because of the internal communication needed to run a tightly coupled compute job. Myrinet, Infiniband, Scali etc. provide some rather impressive interconnect technologies, but they're still not on the same playing field as the shared memory supercomputer systems.

If you're looking to run a few hundred 'fairly atomic' compute jobs, then yes, your cluster works fine and number crunching it. But not all problems are like that.

Re:Blue Gene vs PVM

[mgblst]

It's a lot cheaper to buy 20-30 regular computers than a 1million cray or IBM "supercomputer".
 
Or even better, set up a grid on the computers in the various pools around the department/universities. Setting up Condor on these various machines will get you a very powerful grid in very little time, the extra cost can be really small (if the computers are already left on).

UAB

[WhiteRider]

It's interesting to see UAB on /.

I just graduated from UAB with a BSEE this past May. :P

Overclocking

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm just waiting for tomshardware to publish an article on overclocking one of these. "We get awesome framerates in Quake!"

I remember

[Solandri]

Way back when I was in jr. high around 1980, my friends and I were going ga-ga over the latest issue of Byte magazine at the library. It had a chart listing various computers (processors) and their FLOPS. The 6502 (Apple II) and 8088 (IBM PC) were listed at less than 1000 FLOPS (they didn't do floating point so it had to be emulated in software). We were drooling over the Cray Supercomputer which was listed at 1 million FLOPS, or 1 MFLOPS.

A 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo rates around 500 MFLOPS. An nVidia 8600GT which you can pick up for about $130 rates around 114 GFLOPS (114,000 MFLOPS). The upcoming 9800GTX is supposed to rate at over 1 TFLOPS.

Sorry...

[zeromorph]

Since I was modded "offtopic" but I really feel *on*topic let me elaborate my point:

It's nice that the Blue Gene/L is now considerably lower, but the low budget "supercomputer" is a cluster of inexpensive computers. That is probably shown be their number (373 of 500) in the TOP500 and by the fact that Google runs several clusters of x86 PCs.

Distributed computing is a different solution to the same task that a Blue Gene/L can solve, both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

Alabama-Birmingham and other universities that previously couldn't afford such advanced technology are using supercomputers to cure diseases at the protein level

Does anyone have any examples of specific diseases that Alabama-Birmingham, or any other university, have actually cured "at the protein level" using these BlueGene supercomputers?

Not just doing research that will "eventually contribute to treatments". I want to hear which diseases have these BlueGene supercomputers being pimped in this Slashdot story actually already cured.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[SIIHP]

No, but I have a great example of you being a bigot in my sig.

Now insult me because it's true and you can't do anything about it.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

All this shows is that you're obsessed with me. You're like a stalker caught in the headlights.

What a sick freak you are. Now go say I'm calling you a sick freak because you're gay. When the reason is that you're gay for me, though I've turned you down so many times.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[SIIHP]

I said:"Now insult me because it's true and you can't do anything about it."

You replied:"What a sick freak you are."

How does it fell to know I own you and you dance when I will it bigot?

DANCE!

PS you'll notice I did not do what you claimed I would, I guess you're the only one with no ability to refrain from acting on their base impulses.

You = Property of SIIHP.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

I insult you for my own amusement. The fact that you're a gay masochist and like it too doesn't ruin my fun doing it. It is you who are controlled by your obsession with me. I insult you for sport.

Tell me what this has to do with IBM supercomputers, or admit that you're obsessed with me having sex with you.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

AHAHAHAHA You did exactly what he said you would. I bet you don't even realize he manipulated you so easily. That was awesome watching him make you his bitch, and you fell for it perfectly.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

What a wacko you are, SIIHP, to post your demented gay fantasies, then follow up with an AC sockpuppet post repeating them.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're still dancing, bitch.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

Ha ha, I can post right back at your delusional posts. This is fun. And easier than having to actually analyze your posts! Tell me more about your homosexual fantasies about me, now that you've got me "cornered".

Stupid homophobe virgin.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we've both got you dancing. You lose.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Doc Ruby]

There's only one of you. Don't get started on multiple personalities when you're just a sockpuppet.

Re:Free IBM Advertising on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

You tell yourself whatever you please.

Cause you LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!

Re:"Supercomputer" - SAN Cluster DB

[BrianHursey]

You are correct. A preprocessing cluster needs to be used for parallelizations problems. However it can also be used for clustering database operations via fiber over a SAN (Storage Area Network) environment. This give the flexibility to add more nodes in a business environment to expand storage and preprocessing power. One example is a Oracle RAC cluster software with OCFS oracle cluster file system. With logical volume managers and a flexible storage array like an EMC Symetrix (High end) or a EMC Clariion ( Mid Tier) provides scalability to continually expanding the infrastructure to meet business needs.

Wow, supercomputers for cheap!

[Mikachu]

Wow those sound really cheap! I'll have to pick one up next time I'm out at the mall shopping for 24kt gold t-shirts.

Confused

[GeekyGuy]

Can anybody tell me what is so "super" about the Blue Gene?

How do I paralleled my computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

......

Use those to crack passwords.

[Crazy Taco]

I went to ISU, and man was that ever celebrated when we got that computer. One of the things we used it for (which I was involved with) was putting John the Ripper on it and using it to crack passwords at ISU's national cyber defense competition. That was fun :D....

how fast is it ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea how fast the old one and the new one takes to complete a "while (1) ;" loop ?

Sicortex

[White Flame]

SiCortex still seems to be the best bet to me. About $1.5 mil for the 5832-core 18KW system, $200k for the 648-core 2KW system, in base configurations according to internet hearsay. 1GFLOPS per core, and an interconnect that's incredible. They've apparently demoed the 648-core system at SC'07 now and are slated to ship "this summer".

Nope

[SIIHP]

"I insult you for my own amusement."

No, that's just what I let you think.

DANCE PUPPET!

wondering

[PermanentMarker]

just wondering supercomputers are often used for protein discovery
But are computers realy optimized to do this kind of tasks?
Aperently not i think, since it takes them such a great amount of time.
So should new kind of hardware be devolped for this?.

For example a quantum computer.
Or perhaps a genetic computer.
Or a trained biologic neural network.
Or some kind of different device

perhaps it allready is even in the market ?