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Asus Releases Desktop-Sized Supercomputer
angry tapir writes "Asustek has unveiled its first supercomputer, the desktop computer-sized ESC 1000, which uses Nvidia graphics processors to attain speeds up to 1.1 teraflops. Asus's ESC 1000 comes with a 3.33GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 microprocessor designed for servers, along with 960 graphics processing cores from Nvidia inside three Tesla c1060 Computing Processors and one Quadro FX5800."
Ummm isn't this just a ridiculously powerful desktop computer rather than a super computer? The current 500th super computer on the top500 list is this machine which has a Rmax of 17 Tflops and an Rpeak of just over 37.6. Now its impressive that this desktop system has 1/37th of the power of the lowest machine on the super computer list... but does that really make it a super computer? Moore's Law says that it will take around 10 years for this desktop box to evolve to the power of that current bottom top500 box. So in other words its 10 years behind the performance of the current 500th best super computer.
If its because it hits 1 Tflops then in a few years time you'll have mobile phone "super computers" as Moore's Law is still moving onwards.
This is a very very fast desktop computer suited to certain simulation elements which are GPU intensive. Nice box, fast box.... but not a real modern super computer.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The Cray T3E-1200E reached 1 teraflops in 1998. Now, we can reach that same level of performance (depending on the app) with a desktop computer. How time flys...
Life is not for the lazy.
Are you referring to Republic of China or People's Republic of China? ASUSTek is from Republic of China.
Then you would be happy to know that Nvidia's new Fermi chip supports ECC throughout the architecture.
And you're saying this...why? Are you somehow convinced that these processors show up as general purpose CPUs? They don't. There is no conceivable reason something like this "needs" Windows. You're going to have specialized compilers generating specialized code that gets handed off to the GPUs. OS is mostly a non-issue.
Yeah, as long as that everyman can afford $14,519 for crunching purposes...
For that price I'd build myself a real virtual reality gaming room.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...but it still can't run Crysis at full framerate...
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
Yes. With Accelereyes and cuda.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Nvidia has had a page up for a while on this. Most of these units use small desktop motherboards, have limited ram and IO capability, and lots of GPU. These are poor designs for many calculations. These guys have a dual socket, full server class motherboard with up to 144 GB of ECC DDR3 RAM, as well as putting more than 500 MB/s into their local disk IO channel with up to 32 2.5 inch SATA or SAS drives, in a single quiet deskside chassis.
Asus wasn't the first. They are about a year late to the party.
My old microwave was 1500 watts, the current one is 1300 watts. Wife's hair dryer is 1200 watts. When my 11 year old daughter leaves the bathroom lights on that is 800 watts (8 x 100 watt bulb light bar style fixture). Each Tesla card pulls a maximum of 187.8 Watts per the spec sheet.
Keep in mind that TFLOP is not a single benchmark. There's theoretical peak and then there's actual linpack performance. Single precision is rarely good enough for simulations, they all use double. Naturally, all marketing slicks like to talk about single precision theoretical peak because it's a nice big number, but you'll NEVER actually see that, even in a benchmark. If you're very lucky, your actual practical performance will be in the same neighborhood as the linpack double precision benchmark.
His estimates are bang on, maybe his estimates are european, and yours are american? Cause im european, and i usually see 700-800watt microwaves, and small vacuum cleaners.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980