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Unholy Matrimony? Microsoft and Cray
fetusbear writes with a ZDNet story that says "'Microsoft and Cray are set to unveil on September 16 the Cray CX1, a compact supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008. The pair is expected to tout the new offering as "the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered," with pricing starting at $25,000.' Although this would be the lowest cost hardware ever offered by Cray, it would also be the most expensive desktop ever offered by Microsoft."
I mean, come on, this thing's probably gotta play some pretty good games....
Let's see Toms Hardware and Anandtech put one of these babies through their paces!
My question is, how big does your Word document have to be for it to take a second to scroll from the top to the bottom of the document.
This is my sig.
Man, now even with buying a supercomputer we have to pay the Microsoft tax. We should sign a petition for them to sell the computers with Linux on them. Then we can drop the price to $24,900. That's WAY better.
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
n/t
Oh please. This really isn't "news for nerds". Maybe news for fools, but all of us here have known for months that this would be coming. I mean, what else can you imagine that would run Vista smoothly?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I bet Symantec Antivirus can get it on its knees.
-- Cheers!
...is not actually a "desktop". It's not even "a" computer. It's a cluster, and Cray could definately do better than this. Especially considering Unisys has built computers (no, not clusters) with a lot of processors a long time, many of them Windows Capable. So... Cray builds a cluster, Microsoft gets some free ad space for HPC Server. Hooray!
instead of bloggy blather, you can go to the source.
The man is spinning in his grave!
Just let Cray pass into history.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Since the machine in question isn't even a supercomputer, but simply a cluster of blades, I'd say Cray has nothing to worry about.
I beg to differ, I was running it just fine with only 512mb or ram on a 2.39ghz celeron processor. Once I turned off all the eye candy there were no performance issues.
It's probably the only case I can think of where the minimum requirements were at all realistic.
Everyone else has probably done the usual "how fast can a Cray show a BSoD?" gags, so all I was left with was:
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
You have to realize that communication between nodes in a cluster of off the shelf PCs is going to be much slower than the inter-node communication channels used in a Cray.
Any work that requires a lot of communication will always run faster on a real supercomputer versus a cluster of PCs. There will always be a niche for Cray, but their prices will continue to go up as more and more of their repeat customers realize they don't really need what they're getting.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
It comes at you so fast, the BSOD is blue shifted to purple.
I disagree, but then again, I work in the HPC industry.
1. Standard computers have already taken over all of those jobs that used to require a supercomputer. There's no more market to loose. HPC is a 6-7 billion dollar market. The TAM is growing slower than the rest of the IT industry, but it's still a large niche market.
2. Clusters got really popular for a few years, but have really fallen out of favor at the high end of the HPC market. That said, the difference between a high-end super, and a cluster, is rather small. Thankfully the price difference is shrinking too. Moreover, this product IS a cluster. It looks like an attempt, by Cray, to get into the low end of the HPC market. Cray, like everyone else, would like to be the company taking market share away from itself, rather than let someone else take it.
3. IBM has a compelling strategy of reusing their high-end POWER-X processor super-servers, and selling them as supercomputers. The problem with this, is that they are obscenely expensive as supercomputers. A high-end database server has a whole pile of functionality that is completely unnecessary for HPC jobs, both in hardware, and in software. Big iron servers are also WAY more expensive, per-processor, than a super. As such, IBM is also making supers out of commodity clusers, commodity clusters with CELL coprocessors, and BlueGene, which is much closer to CrayXT than it is to an IBM mainframe or superserver. I would argue that IBM's diversity may work against it, in the HPC market, as it tries to fit a round peg into a square hole.
I'm not sure Cray will be very successful with this CX1 product, or generally, selling to the low-end HPC market. That, however, is not reason to believe that there is no need for venders specialized in HPC systems. Cray has made quite a comeback, in the last few years. The reason one thinks of Cray as a dinosaur, is that the HPC market is so much smaller now, relative to the entire IT industry, compared to the 1980s. Nonetheless, it's still an important niche.
They have gone to Plaid!
I came to this thread for +5 Funnies like I couldn't even imagine.
I was not disappointed.
A supercomputer turns all tasks into IO bound problems.
A mainframe turns all tasks into a CPU bound problem.
A microcomputer just runs awhile and crashes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
not trolling boys, so relax, its an OPINION.
For many of us coders, geeks and otherwise technically inclined here on Slashdot, this issue is one where for some, it is an emotional outlet, where few others exist. Others have issues pertaining to Sex, Families, LIFE, and other things to massage our emotional minds over.
To many of us, Microsoft represents something we love to hate, because we can. There is a disconnect between what works in technology, and what works in business. Many of us downplay the importance of Marketing, Leverage, Tie-in, Competition Analysis, and other stuff you don't learn in your CS program, but only in Business school.
We have a hard time seeing Microsoft as a business, responsible to its shareholders above all else, we embrace those orgs who see themselves as some kind of technical crusader, ready to right the wrongs in our industry, using truth, justice, and the American way.
It is the rare geek who can get beyond the technical arguments and embrace the quite logical reasons for why Microsoft has so much marketshare today. The concept of "Barriers to Entry" is rarely discussed when pushing an alternative to MS Office, Exchange Server, or other Microsoft tools.
Instead, we choose to blame the stupid CIO, who in a moment of insanity, decides to go with the Microsoft solution, like 90% of his peers, when he could be that brave, intrepid warrior for good, by going with Linux Servers, Open Office and more.
I mean, who actually uses those integrated Calendar/Scheduling thingies anyway, dammit? If I want to book a conference room 2 weeks in advance, I'll hang a post-it note on the damn door! Easy, and I dont have to deal with integrity testing that blasted Exchange database!
You see, there is nobility in suffering.
If it takes me a week to get my DVD-RW to burn disks under Linux, who cares, if I am a better person for the effort?
It is simply a case of the quest for perfection acting as an enemy of the "good enough".
This is a highly simplistic argument, tonque in cheek, and all that, but true.
And, as always, I got karma to burn bitches, so if you disagree, give it your best shot!