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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. "
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
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)
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.
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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
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
Uh, wait... oops.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Micro Channel????
:)
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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.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Go away and don't come back until you've got a clue. When was the last time you saw Linux running on a 64 CPU SMP system? Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Linux fan and have been running it for nearly 8 years now (I've even had it running on Sun Enterprise servers), but it doesn't yet scale as well as Solaris.
it's also why 80% of major corporations are abandoning solaris for linux.
Really? And just where did you pluck this figure from? In my experience, a few major corporations are replacing Solaris with Linux for DNS, email, and maybe web serving, and they're doing it for price/perfomance reasons, not for SMP scalability. None are doing it at the high end.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Nothing mentioned about security, stability, scalability... people seem just not to care.
And when you are a linux fan, that can hurt a lot...
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product