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Supercomputer On the Cheap

Posted by kdawson on from the mere-six-teraflops dept.

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."

6 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. "Supercomputer" by pzs · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    Peter

    1. Re:"Supercomputer" by jcgf · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

  2. Normal business... by IBBoard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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'!

    1. Re:Normal business... by DaveCar · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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?)

  3. Taking about supercomputers... by zeromorph · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
    --
    "Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
  4. academic and research? try finance by Gothmolly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.