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IBM, DOE, and VA Linux Building Open Cluster Center
DaveM writes "The Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory is working with IBM and VA Linux Systems to build "Chiba City" -- the largest supercomputing cluster dedicated to highly scalable open source software development.
The 512-CPU Linux cluster will be opened to the U.S. research community, including universities, laboratories and industry. "
Yes, there is a secret message, and this is it:
Transmeta's policy has been to remain silent about its plans
until it had something to demonstrate to the world.
On January 19th, 2000, Transmeta is going to announce and demonstrate
what Crusoe processors can do.
Simultaneously, all of the details will go up on this Web site
for everyone on the Internet to see.
Crusoe will be cool hardware and software for mobile applications.
Crusoe will be unconventional, which is why we wanted
to let you know in advance to come look at the entire Web site
in January, so that you can get the full story and have access to all
of the real details as soon as they are available.
I guess since they've made a Notes-server dedicated box it was time to concentrate on one with enough grunt to take on the Notes client!
my blog: good times, man, good times
... getting the 11th post???
They are aware of the fact that Chiba is one of the many names for Marijuana, right?
With this kind of computing power available, perhaps project MouseIsHouse can be completed. This project, started 30 years ago, has the potential to revolutionize housing, while literally ending world hunger. Essentially, the idea is to, through genetic engineering, create a mouse who can function as a house. The mouse would be roughly a 300 foot diameter sphere, with a large central cavity, kept clean and dry through a biological moisture evacuation system. We could breed houses, much like we breed cows today. Once grown, the MouseIsHouse will be sulf sustaining, living off photosynthesis and liquid nitrogen. The trick is merging the sequoia tree DNA with the mouse DNA. Doing this requires more processing power than researches have had access to. A 512 node beowulf cluster is perhaps one step closer to free, clean housing and food. On the ceiling of the living chambers grow an edible sludge. While not supremely delicious, it is nutritious, and due to cheapness can wipe out hunger in third world countries. I know this sounds too good to be true, but as anyone involved in the field of animalHousing is well aware of the importance of our work.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
i'm not a beowulf geek, but 256 nodes seems like a lot of boxes to be running all those scheduling and message passing protocols between. I am curious what they are using to switch that much traffic, and if the GigE is going to be enough to handle all of the traffic between nodes.
I couldn't find any info on the network hardware, however. Sigh.
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
I forget whether Chiba city is a Gibson or Stephenson thing, but when I was growing up, Chiba (cheeba ?) meant weed (yeah, that weed). I would love to see a chiba city ;>)
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
This cluster has been applied to genetic programming in California. Check http://www.genetic-programming.com/ and http://www.genetic-programming.com/machine1000.htm ...It's not what you know...it's not who you know...it's who knows what you know --Anon
can be found here:
/ docs/betagrid/EvardEL99/index.htm
http://www.extremelinux.org/activities/usenix99
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
...Headed by Remy Evard, an NU alum. Yay CCS!
It appears this cluster is for development of open-source software. That is amazing - I doubt there are many computers in the world that are more powerful than this and used for software development.
Almost all the super-clusters like this one are used for energy research, weather forcasting, and other scientific research (and of course "classified purposes").
I guess they will be developing super powerful scientific anaylasis applications, but I do wonder what exactly. I mean, isn't half the problem with this type of application developing the algorithms for weather forecasting (or whatever) in the first place?
I suppose they can develop some kind of supercomputer infrastrucure that would be useful in all type of supercomputer applications. (PVM?)
A highly scalable image rendering package would be pretty cool, too.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
Chiba is a coastal city in Japan, not too far from Tokyo.
:).
It was referenced a lot by Gibson.
My grandfather's from there
I had no idea it was a slang term for marijuana.
jeb.
It's Gibson -- as in "Hack a Gibson." ;)
The l ink in the above comment is actually a presentation about the cluster. Here's the juicy bits:
- The primary purpose is to be a scalability testbed
- They expect the cluster to eventually grow to 1000+ nodes (they have a timeline that indicates that they should be getting ready to install the next 768 nodes RSN)
- They mention some sample applications
- There's a 16' x 8' Active Mural
- It will be open to open source development groups and 'people who ask nicely'
- They mention some of the unique management issues here and here
- The cluster is organized as "towns"
- The cluster is actually comprised of 3 12 systems in it's current config.
- Here's the system configurations and network topology
This is a GREAT idea. Now us poor hackers in the bay area can afford to live here without having to shell out ungodly rent rates for little closets full of mice. Now the tables are turned and the mice ARE the closets! Seriously, this gives the terms "mobile home" a whole new set of meanings. One question though? What if ferrets turned out to be more viable large family dwellings? Do you think the state of California would lift the restriction on them if they were to be used as dwelling space only?
It will be interesting to see how the DOE's attempt to power Washington D.C. with cheeba turns out. Clinton is sure to oppose it, even though we know he used to fill up on chiba fuel (but didn't actually burn it).
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Chiba means thoudsands of leaves in Japanese. In particular, leaves from trees not Marijuana!
this is great news. its good to see IBM leading in open source enterprise computing. they know what we have known for a long time...no commercial unix/os can match linux in reliability, scalability, or innovation.
the facts are there, solaris/sun hardware cannot even compare to intel/linux scalability and SMP efficiency. it's also why 80% of major corporations are abandoning solaris for linux. linux just plain outscales and outperforms.
the sgi/cray stuff is downright pathetic. we've seen quad xeon linux machines completely run circles around SGI origin 2000 systems in production. also, beowoulf makes cray look like an apple II. sgi is dead, and finally no one has to rely on their overpriced, underperforming hardware...(and unscalable, non enterprise ready IRIX os).
Linux is here to rule the world, and now IBM stands behind it. IBM only picks winners, you do the math.
LiNuX MaN
Uh, wait... oops.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
And it is not a city from the Neuromancer, any more than airplanes are from the same book. Yes, Chiba City appears in the book, but it is a real city with millions of people living there. It is about half an hour outside of Tokyo, and the real name is Chiba-shi, where shi (pronounced like she) is Japanese for city.
Let's support these companies if we can...
Micro Channel????
:)
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This looks wonderfull... Send a note of support to info@anl.gov or the lead guy on the IBM side, tfiggatt@us.ibm.com...
These guys are not only doing stuff that is fun to look at, they are willing to let people work on their own projects within their project... Drop them a note...
You know, I've read this guys user page, I've wandered through some of his previous comments, I have contemplated the nature of his existance, and it just plain don't make sense.
What sort of crazy electro-neural burst makes people suddenly have the urge to type this stuff? I mean, its funny, yeah, its quite witty, but when you boil away the outer shell, it comes down to being downright insane. Crazy, loony, nuts, crackers, bonkers, stark raving mad.
It MAKES NO SENSE. MouseIsHouse project!? Disgusting but highly nutritious MOUSE SHIT? Where does this COME FROM? I believe that this guy may, in essensce, be some kind of proof that determinism is false. There is no possible sequence of events, no matter how strange or contrived, that could have generated a neural map so convoluted that all those ideas would occur simultaneously, or even over a reasonably short period of time.
I'm going to break down and cry now.
You can't win a fight.
For some reason all of this reminds me of a Borg cube --- thousands of nodes, some controlling others, all networked, etc etc.
I guess it would kind of suck to be a computational node -- doing integrals in your head 24/7 for weeks at a time sounds kind of painful... Just like preparing for a math exam.
-S
If you can buy processor time on it, I think it'd be neat to just buy enough to get you to the top of the seti@home contributor list, and then bask in the glory of a first post.
-S
Hey, maybe we talk Mindcraft into running their :~)
NT vs. Linux benchmark on the Argonne cluster.
And don't forget to include "total cost of
ownership".
[Insert pithy quote here]
This is sad for 3 reasons: 1: VALinux does not make true beowulf clusters, if you ever took a good look at how they deal with load balancing you would understand. 2: They are using pentium processor which are not the best for the type of work this cluster will be used for. 3: They are using Gigabit Ethernet, not the best choice. Mathew Lang, Root Computing mathew@rootcomputing.com
What the hell does that have to do with
Chiba City ?
Just curious ,
Your Squire
Squireson
When I lived in Tokyo, I went to Chiba-Ken a few times. I always thought freaks and malcontents lived there, though, as it seemed like every time there was a murder or something it happened in Chiba.
Am I the only person that'd love to see some photo's?
Deleted
I wonder if this will make it to the Top 500 supercomputers. And, if it does, where would it rank. Would it beat Intel's ASCI Red (#1)?
Expert Java EE Consulting
Go Dan and JP and Remy and everybody else doing stuff with Chiba!
-Cory
Posted from the wireless couch.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product