Ask Slashdot: Best Use For a New Supercomputing Cluster?

Supp0rtLinux writes "In about 2 weeks time I will be receiving everything necessary to build the largest x86_64-based supercomputer on the east coast of the U.S. (at least until someone takes the title away from us). It's spec'ed to start with 1200 dual-socket six-core servers. We primarily do life-science/health/biology related tasks on our existing (fairly small) HPC. We intend to continue this usage, but to also open it up for new uses (energy comes to mind). Additionally, we'd like to lease access to recoup some of our costs. So, what's the best Linux distro for something of this size and scale? Any that include a chargeback option/module? Additionally, due to cost contracts, we have to choose either InfiniBand or 10Gb Ethernet for the backend: which would Slashdot readers go with if they had to choose? Either way, all nodes will have four 1Gbps Ethernet ports. Finally, all nodes include only a basic onboard GPU. We intend to put powerful GPUs into the PCI-e slot and open up the new HPC for GPU related crunching. Any suggestions on the most powerful Linux friendly PCI-e GPU available?"

Comments

Re:Lost some funding?

[webmistressrachel]

Monster cables are only worth the investment for speakers and line-level / mic stuff (i.e. analogue signals). Having a Monster-cabled computer network would be no better than having the generics of the same cables.

We all know this - and MP3 and the so called "average listeners" (people who buy Britney Spears) have ruined the hi-fi industry with their cable sarcasm. Yes, MP3 will sound crap on a Monster cable, too. But 44.1KHz 16-bit sound, converted to analogue in the transport and sent to the amp via line leads WILL benefit from Monster / premium cables, as will speaker cables of any kind.