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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."

16 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. From TFA by DaveCar · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Pamela Anderson eat your heart out!

    1. Re:From TFA by IBBoard · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    2. Re:From TFA by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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  2. Beowulf! by rgravina · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

  3. Re:"Supercomputer" by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  4. 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'!

  5. Stanford will always have the biggest by bblboy54 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stanford still has the the best idea.

    1. Re:Stanford will always have the biggest by bunratty · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

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    2. Re:Stanford will always have the biggest by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

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  6. Re:"Supercomputer" by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
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  7. Re:Obligatory by Tap13579 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will it blend? That is the question.

  8. JUST IN TIME!! by armodude · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  9. That's nothing.... by E++99 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

  10. Re:ivy league cash? by necro81 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  11. Re:academic and research? try finance by locokamil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  12. 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.