Exactly what did you 'price out' in a single box with proper redundant PSUs, etc.?
With a maximum CPU setup, Octane III offers 50% better price/performance than a bunch of Dell servers.
For inter-node coms, the interconnect is GigE or Infiniband, much the same as for any cluster. The sw is no different (doesn't need to be).
If Rackable (now SGI) has carried on with the same traditions as the old SGI, the support will be very good. I adminned an Onyx2 16-CPU 5-pipe IR2E, a dozen O2s, dozen 320s, CAVE and RealityCentre for nearly 4 years and the support from SGI was always excellent. I hope the new SGI keeps the same levels of quality.
Octane III is _not_ a shared memory system. You'll have to wait for UltraViolet for that. Should be obvious it's not btw, as current i7s don't have the relevant NUMA support. The default interconnect is GigE, with Infiniband optional.
In August I helped a company source three Dell R710s for rendering moderately complex 3DSMax models (24 cores total, all i7 XEON 2.93GHz, 96GB RAM total). The Octane III would have offered nearly 50% better price/performance. Ah well...
robthebloke writes: > nah. What put the boot into SGI systems was their premature jump to > Intel Itanium processors....
Alas, not SGI's fault. Itanium was very late, and the first iteration was not that good. This is why the original Origin2000 rack could only hold 16 MIPS CPUs, because it was designed with the thermal characteristics of Itanium in mind (much hotter). Years later SGI released Origin3900 with up to 128 1GHz MIPS CPU in one rack, showing just what was possible given the lower cooling requirements. But by that time it was far too late of course.
Sadly this was a transition they could not prevent. Many of the SGI CPU design team left in the winter of 1996/7 (for Intel or elsewhere), drawn away by huge salaries. Intel played a skillful game of bragging about how good Itanium was going to be and thus obtaining but by bit the very design staff they needed (from SGI, DEC/Alpha, etc.) to design Itanium. I knew someone on the R10K design team back then; he said even floor sweepers in the CPU labs were paid enormous amounts. As a design though, the current Itanium2 is quite good; John Mashey (STREAM author) told me that many aspects of what SGI had been planning for SN1/2 (Beast/Alien) are incorporated into Itanium2, eg. the way it performs so well despite its low clock, though the chip doesn't have the additional vector/media extensions which SGI was working on (MDMX, etc.) SGI wanted a chip that offered vector processing in a manner that allowed each register in a vector to also be used for media processing - this would have given enormous processing speed for video, etc. But without the staff, moving on with these ideas was going to be difficult at best.
I was told that if SGI had continued with its own plans, and at the time assuming Intel was able to release Itanium as planned, SGI's CPU would still have been faster (by about a third or more) but too expensive to compete. Thus, at the time, the switch to Itanium. I very much doubt SGI would have switched if they'd known Itanium was going to be so late. For a start, Origin would have had a much greater CPU density, greatly increasing its price/performance ratio.
That wasn't really what ruined their business though. I've dealt with a wide range of different companies over the years, helped sell $M worth of SGI kit. IMO the 3rd-party sales model was very damaging, tech info was not available easily enough about key aspects of certain products, the marketing/PR was often woeful (which led to poor targeting of customers for products, eg. selling O2 as an upgrade over Indigo2 which it was never meant to be - this happened at ILM), and numerous times, despite feedback/comment, they simply didn't produce what customers wanted, eg. a speed-gfx solution without advanced features such as 48bit (aimed at CAD/animation) instead of the high-quality gfx designs like VPro. Likewise, lots of daft design choices like Fuel not having audio or Gbit as standard, Octane2's mbd not having U160 or Gbit, the later PCI cage for Octane not using 66MHz PCI and a better XIO/PCI conversion ASIC, not using the Cobalt core for O2+, not changing O2's PCI to 66MHz in the O2+, not changing the Ethernet to Gbit or the SCSI to U160 in the O2, not filling the other 4 GE sockets in the IRx GE board to double its GE speed, etc. I could write a huge list, but you get the idea.
Point is, it was a combination of things. From secretive pricing to bad marketing. They had excellent products which were poorly sold.
Once the rot set in, key staff left, including most of the two dozen or so people I got to know over the years. NVIDIA did its best to poach the gfx division, which worked very well for them, the original GF256 being based on IR gfx. Irony is, ATI nabbed some of the same people from NVIDIA later on. But even then SGI had opportunities to get back in the game, eg. NVIDIA wrote
Although Octane III is a far cry from the MIPS/IRIX systems which the product name harks back to (and I should know, I have 60 of them), it is a decent design nonetheless, even though I'm sure the aesthetics will not appeal to many. Strangely for me, it looks rather like my PC from the front (Centurion Plus 534 case).
I recently had to spec out a 24-core renderfarm for a small design company in Spain, consisting of three Dell rack servers, each dual quad-core i7 XEON 2.93GHz, 32GB ECC RAM, etc., which came to 16000 UKP + tax (list price). From the information I have at the moment, an Octane III with a similar spec (ie. six CPUs, 96GB RAM) would provide nearly 50% better price/performance, which is very respectable indeed.
I'll see if I can obtain some pricing, find out whether this system does compete to a decent degree. It absolutely does with 80 cores, but a more mid-range spec will be of greater interest to the companies I typically deal with.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly what did you 'price out' in a single box with proper redundant PSUs, etc.?
With a maximum CPU setup, Octane III offers 50% better price/performance than a bunch of Dell servers.
For inter-node coms, the interconnect is GigE or Infiniband, much the same as for any cluster. The
sw is no different (doesn't need to be).
If Rackable (now SGI) has carried on with the same traditions as the old SGI, the support will be very
good. I adminned an Onyx2 16-CPU 5-pipe IR2E, a dozen O2s, dozen 320s, CAVE and RealityCentre for nearly
4 years and the support from SGI was always excellent. I hope the new SGI keeps the same levels of quality.
Ian.
mr_death writes:
> Well, SGI's business didn't get magically better just because they were acquired for a song.
Very true!
> Rackable really doesn't understand HPC, ...
What is your evidence/rationale for this? Just curious. The feedback I had from the SGI CEO was rather positive.
> ... so I think it will be a difficult integration. ...
More difficult than the Cray merger? I doubt it. :D
> ... I'd further expect some gyrations on their future direction, as Rackable management figures
> out how to play the game.
If UltraViolet does well, they will be able to stabilise.
> In any case, we're all in interesting times.
Yup! I won't be ditching my IRIX SGIs anytime soon though. :D
http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16720350
http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16719759
http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16721054
http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16721251
(and numerous others)
Ian.
Octane III is _not_ a shared memory system. You'll have to wait for UltraViolet for that.
Should be obvious it's not btw, as current i7s don't have the relevant NUMA support.
The default interconnect is GigE, with Infiniband optional.
In August I helped a company source three Dell R710s for rendering moderately complex
3DSMax models (24 cores total, all i7 XEON 2.93GHz, 96GB RAM total). The Octane III
would have offered nearly 50% better price/performance. Ah well...
Ian.
robthebloke writes: ...
> nah. What put the boot into SGI systems was their premature jump to
> Intel Itanium processors.
Alas, not SGI's fault. Itanium was very late, and the first iteration
was not that good. This is why the original Origin2000 rack could
only hold 16 MIPS CPUs, because it was designed with the thermal
characteristics of Itanium in mind (much hotter). Years later SGI
released Origin3900 with up to 128 1GHz MIPS CPU in one rack, showing
just what was possible given the lower cooling requirements. But by
that time it was far too late of course.
Sadly this was a transition they could not prevent. Many of the SGI
CPU design team left in the winter of 1996/7 (for Intel or
elsewhere), drawn away by huge salaries. Intel played a skillful game
of bragging about how good Itanium was going to be and thus obtaining
but by bit the very design staff they needed (from SGI, DEC/Alpha,
etc.) to design Itanium. I knew someone on the R10K design team back
then; he said even floor sweepers in the CPU labs were paid enormous
amounts. As a design though, the current Itanium2 is quite good; John
Mashey (STREAM author) told me that many aspects of what SGI had been
planning for SN1/2 (Beast/Alien) are incorporated into Itanium2, eg.
the way it performs so well despite its low clock, though the chip
doesn't have the additional vector/media extensions which SGI was
working on (MDMX, etc.) SGI wanted a chip that offered vector
processing in a manner that allowed each register in a vector to also
be used for media processing - this would have given enormous
processing speed for video, etc. But without the staff, moving on with
these ideas was going to be difficult at best.
I was told that if SGI had continued with its own plans, and at the
time assuming Intel was able to release Itanium as planned, SGI's CPU
would still have been faster (by about a third or more) but too
expensive to compete. Thus, at the time, the switch to Itanium. I very
much doubt SGI would have switched if they'd known Itanium was going
to be so late. For a start, Origin would have had a much greater CPU
density, greatly increasing its price/performance ratio.
That wasn't really what ruined their business though. I've dealt with
a wide range of different companies over the years, helped sell $M
worth of SGI kit. IMO the 3rd-party sales model was very damaging,
tech info was not available easily enough about key aspects of
certain products, the marketing/PR was often woeful (which led to
poor targeting of customers for products, eg. selling O2 as an
upgrade over Indigo2 which it was never meant to be - this happened
at ILM), and numerous times, despite feedback/comment, they simply
didn't produce what customers wanted, eg. a speed-gfx solution
without advanced features such as 48bit (aimed at CAD/animation)
instead of the high-quality gfx designs like VPro. Likewise, lots of
daft design choices like Fuel not having audio or Gbit as standard,
Octane2's mbd not having U160 or Gbit, the later PCI cage for Octane
not using 66MHz PCI and a better XIO/PCI conversion ASIC, not using
the Cobalt core for O2+, not changing O2's PCI to 66MHz in the O2+,
not changing the Ethernet to Gbit or the SCSI to U160 in the O2, not
filling the other 4 GE sockets in the IRx GE board to double its GE
speed, etc. I could write a huge list, but you get the idea.
Point is, it was a combination of things. From secretive pricing to
bad marketing. They had excellent products which were poorly sold.
Once the rot set in, key staff left, including most of the two dozen
or so people I got to know over the years. NVIDIA did its best to
poach the gfx division, which worked very well for them, the original
GF256 being based on IR gfx. Irony is, ATI nabbed some of the same
people from NVIDIA later on. But even then SGI had opportunities to
get back in the game, eg. NVIDIA wrote
This isn't the old SGI anymore, it's Rackable.
You're right about the double precision fp though.
Another bonus is the lower power consumption of an
integrated system compared to a cluster, which
means lower TCO.
Ian.
Although Octane III is a far cry from the MIPS/IRIX systems which the
product name harks back to (and I should know, I have 60 of them), it
is a decent design nonetheless, even though I'm sure the aesthetics
will not appeal to many. Strangely for me, it looks rather like my PC
from the front (Centurion Plus 534 case).
I recently had to spec out a 24-core renderfarm for a small design
company in Spain, consisting of three Dell rack servers, each dual
quad-core i7 XEON 2.93GHz, 32GB ECC RAM, etc., which came to
16000 UKP + tax (list price). From the information I have at the moment,
an Octane III with a similar spec (ie. six CPUs, 96GB RAM) would provide
nearly 50% better price/performance, which is very respectable indeed.
I'll see if I can obtain some pricing, find out whether this system
does compete to a decent degree. It absolutely does with 80 cores, but
a more mid-range spec will be of greater interest to the companies I
typically deal with.
Ian.