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Windows Breaks Into Supercomputer Top 10

Posted by timothy on from the adversity-breeds-strength-in-redmond-too dept.

yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

7 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Retarded by Directrix1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Honestly, why would anyone want to roll-out something like this on Windows. A lot of extra expense for little practical value.

    --
    Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
  2. Cost per MIP or how many CALs by RichMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So how many CALs are required to access the system?

    And if I want to make the system available to a different researcher every 2 hours how much is it going to cost them to be license compliant?

    How much cpu power am I going to need to compute the licensing costs?

    http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sam/lic_cal.mspx

  3. Potentially bogus by Greg+Lindahl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A couple of years ago I was surprised when one of my HPC customers issued a press release saying that their machine ran Windows HPC. The high-speed interconnect we'd sold them had no Windows drivers. You can guess what was going on: MicroSoft paid for the press release, and the machine actually ran Linux.

    Dawning's previous fast machine ran Linux.

    1. Re:Potentially bogus by leoxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What is most interesting to me is that in the case of HPC, the situation between Windows and Linux is reversed. Linux has overwhelming market share in HPC, compared to Windows status as a niche player (and that is being generous). Despite this fact, Microsoft regularly gets fawning coverage in the media for their HPC efforts, far more than they should be if you consider their marketshare. It's like PC Magazine going on and on about all the latest developments in the Linux desktop market.

  4. Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A C64, according to this guy runs at about 320 flops.

    That just can't be. I remember the Programmer's Reference Manual showing most normal instructions finishing in 2 or 3 clocks, or maybe 350,000 IPS. I can't imagine that FLOPS would be 1,000 times slower than other opcodes. I mean, I'm pretty certain I could re-implement them in assembler in many fewer than 1,000 instructions.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  5. Re:Yeah, mut how much useful stuff is happening? by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    considering that FLOPS refers to the number of floating point operations the processor can perform per second, which would be the same regardless of what OS a system is running, i would have to say that your guess is incorrect.

    also, considering that most supercomputers are actually supercomputing clusters, the "supercomputer" in question is probably running more than just a single instance of the OS. since the Dawning 5000A uses Quadcore Opteron processors, and is listed as having 30720 cores, it should have 7680 processors. and since Windows Server 2008 can only use 8 processors (i think HPC is limited to 4), the 5000A must have at minimum 960 nodes. and since each node would be running its own instance of Windows HPC, the Dawning 5000A must be running at least 960 instances of Windows.

    i don't know how Windows HPC compares to Linux or other OSes, but running a bloated OS on a supercomputing cluster would definitely have a large impact on its real world performance.

  6. An attempt to artificially inflate my linux ego: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    #10 on the list uses a AMD x86_64 Opteron Quad Core @ 1900 MHz and has 30720 cores and pumps out 180600 GFlops.

    #8 on the list uses a AMD x86_64 Opteron Quad Core @ 2100 MHz and has 30976 cores and pumps out 205000 GFlops.

    #10 runs windows, #8 runs linux.

    Working through this: Gflops/# of cores/Mhz per core I get:

    #10 with 3.094 Gflops/Mhz and #8 with 3.151 Gflop/Mhz

    This leaves the linux machine getting 57 more KFlops per Mhz than the windows box.

    disclaimer: Totally useless mental farking, without knowing more about the systems other components and more about the processor generations it's silly to assume the 57 KFlops is purely due to the OS, but hey, it's windows and everyone loves an easy target. :D