They release new IRIX/MIPS stuff and it's canned as being proprietary/too-slow/too-expensive/beaten-by-my-P4/beaten-by-a-beowulf/etc.
I'd have thought that all you Linux-boys would be wetting your pants at this latest announcement (which everyone familiar with SGI knew was comming months ago). Instead it looks like most people haven't even read the article yet are eager to shit on this new HPC platform.
The best comparision I can come up with is Average Slashdotter == Import Rice Boy.
Both love their shitty cobbled together kit and lack any understanding of the complexities of such systems. Both will horribly hack up and mod everything they can to the detriment of real performance. And both love to trash high-end stuff they don't understand and which they'll never lay a filthy a finger on.
I Guess that's why I stick to comp.arch & comp.sys.sgi.* for (mostly) intelligent/robust/informative posts.
This post was incorrect when it showed up in the MIPS R16000 thread and it's even more incorrect in this thread. The fact that it has been modded up is just a sad comment about the meat-wads that wander through slashdot.
Re:SGI is finally making some new products
on
New SGI Altix 3000
·
· Score: 1
Wow, the ignorance drippin off that statement caused me to slip and fall.
The Indy is cool but it's very old. The platform is approaching 10 years. I've got a maxxed out Indy with video I/O and mjpeg compression. A better machine would be an O2 with A/V, Vivo (SD Video) and DVLink (FireWire).
With prices the way they are you would be wise to get a low end Octane. Cheap (~$200), much much faster, still very cool.
There are many SGI systems running over 1000 CPUs, LANL has a 6144 CPU installation.
If you read John Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper you'll see that such systems can be configured in a mind-boggling number of ways. So SGI packages certain common/sensible configs. You can give them your credit card and call in an order for a preconfigured 512 CPU machine, no prob. If you want 1024 CPUs, or 2048 CPUs, or more you have to sit down, have a nice lunch with them, and talk about your exact needs so they can spec a system for you.
When making perf. statements these kind of articles are always misleading. They upgraded from old SGI hardware running IRIX to new *whatever* hardware running LINUX. Yeah, I'm sure all your perf. belong to LINUX.
These type of machines are their biggest sellers, so much so that I think their worstation line is suffering. There is a sizeable market for machines of this size and larger. You can browser through their newsroom to see who is buying what and how many.
SGI maintains a sizeable inventory of Origin and Onyx parts along with all their other products. They literally get the components off the shelf.
For the most part SGI systems are highly standard. They only vary when the customer has big $$$ (like Lockheed or the NSA) and asks for specific changes.
Your second point is really good, one gets what one pays for.
For the high end I'd like to see 2U workstations using NUMAflex (same chipset from O3x00), with one or two CPUs, room for 16GB RAM, and better-than-VPRO graphics which can be repurposed and racked up to form a large SiS ccNUMA system with the ability to chain together each units graphics cards in a manner similar to InfinitePerformance graphics as seen on Onyx300/3000. HP sells Itanium2 2U systems simliar to what I've described except that when racked up they form a cluster and not a large NUMA machine, and they have nothing like IP graphics.
For the low end I'd like to see a compactified Fuel or similar using either MIPS or Itanium2 (which ever is cheaper) and V12 graphics for under $6000.
Please people take the time to understand before you let shiat fall out your mouth. That is 3.2GB/s of peak dedicated bandwidth through a point to point high-speed non-blocking crossbar. SGI systems don't use a bus based topology. That means that you can have 3.2GB/s from CPUMEM at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from I/ODISK at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from GFXCPU (sustained 2.4GB/s). Each router supports 8 connections at 3.2GB/s (1.6GB/s down 1.6GB/s up). And this is for their workstations, the new Origins bump things up a notch.
When you see that a PC can do X.XGB/s peak that bandwitch is shared by all subsystems attatched to the bus.
The main CPU in an desktop SGI system is matched just to fit this architecture. Whilst your AMD system is sitting idle 65% of the time waiting for data to get where it's going and dealing with bus contention issues and a crappy MSFT OS.
Read through Ian Mapleson's Octane Architecture paper to get a better idea of the tech. that goes into an SGI workstation. Please also note that the Octane is a system from 1997 and no longer sold (only on eBay), the Octane2 is faster, and the Fuel is much faster though only offers 1 CPU.
ASCI Blue Mountain is an O2K with 6144 CPUs, it lives at LANL.
See also #52 from www.top500.org:
SGI ORIGIN 2000 250 MHz LANL/ACL USA 1999 2048CPUs.
That's 2048CPUs. SGI only sells pre-configed systems up to 512 CPUs, otherwise you have to call them and go out to lunch before they sell you several thousand processors.
SI/SSI still rips-it up when it comes to CAD. Load up a 2000+ part assy in Pro/ENGINEER and a couple of windows with smaller parts and drawings and can watch the fastest PC crap out. The Octane just asks for more.
MaxIMPACT with TRAM installed is $250 if you know where to go. No one pays the prices listed on reseller pages. Notice also that SGI hasn't sold Indigo2s in many many years, all those prices are from resellers/junk collectors so you can't blame SGI for their high price.
As per an extra $400 to upgrade to SE, not if you know where to buy. I can get a complete Octane system with SE for under $400. An entire system with MXE can be had for just under $1500. So the prices you're seeing are way way high an don't reflect what a half-way intelligent person would pay.
IRIX is not a product, they do not sell it for any amount of money, it is bundled with the hardware. You can purchase media with a basic right to use/no warranty/no liability/no support for $600. Though you'd be wise to just go to eBay and pay $100 - $150 for a set of media.
No such thing as a Personal Onyx, unless you've got some unreleased/strange hardware. Perhaps you have a Personal IRIS (very old). But the R4400 would indicate not. Anyway, the other systems you list are still valueable and quite useful. I use various SGIs for all sorts of things and for the money 2nd-hand systems are a great deal, lots of fun, work increadibly well for certain tasks, and they look really cool.
Lastly, there is no $60K Fuel. Fuel starts at $11K and can more than double. A maxxed out Octane2 with 2 CPUs and tons of RAM and every option card you can find including DM6 might push the price to $60K. As per usefull software, anything by Discreet is amazing on an Octane2.
What you quoted is wrong. 1 CX Brick = 4U = 16 CPUs. That's 4 CPUs per 1U of space. A single rack can take 4 CX Bricks = 128 CPUs in 16U of space. That rack also contains an R brick (router), various I/O bricks, disk arrays, and you can squeeze in several InfiniteReality4 pipes. Then you can take 4 racks and combine them for 512CPUs (4 CPUs per 1U, 128CPUs taking up 16U per rack). All one shared memory system.
The Athlon system you mention is packing 2 CPUs per 1U of space (half as dense per U), probably 1 or 2 drives, maybe room for 1 or 2 expansion cards, and a decent amount of RAM, all filling up one rack. Makes a nice cluster. Everyone knows the Athlon is memory starved. It's not faster than MIPS on many real work loads. Anyway, it doesn't compare to what SGI is selling. The comparison is like saying a riced-up turbo Honda will beat a Ferrari... well maybe on a drag strip but dragging is for monkeys, track 'em and watch the Ferrari lap the Honda, that's if the Honda doesn't blow it's engine first.
Sounds like you've never used a Challenge or an Origin system before.
As per the top 100, it will take a large customer who asks for large system (5,000CPUs+) to get SGI on the list. SGI doesn't build these things for the record books they build them for customers. Even a smaller Origin3900 system beats several of the top systems in memory bandwidth.
> There product fills a very small niche, yet all
> the stupid kids like you think they're so neat.
My two Indys fill a niche on my desk and I prefer using them to my PC. I'm guessing you're talking out your ass, what SGI systems do you have on your desk?
> As an aside the open critical component in a
> supercomputer is memory, fast memory, whith out
> that it matters not a jot how quickly your
> processors work. So what is the memory
> bandwidth of this baby?
You can read about the latency in John Mashey's NUMAflex paper, though I beleive they've improved on this.
As per bandwidth, I think it is 13.2GB point to point. Total system bandwidth scales linearly with each CX brick and supporting router. Remember though that this is dedicated bandwidth through a crossbar not the shared bandwidth of a bus. Either way I believe SGI has the highest sustained-bandwidth systems currently on the market. Their Origin-Itanium2 systems set a worldrecord 120GB/s on STREAM. Maybe some highend 1-offs beat it but essentially SGI's NUMA systems are the Ferraris of the computing industry.
Note though: the SGI press release states that it only scales to 512 processors. it looks like they are having problems scaling beyond that. It is probably having to do with the interconnect and SSI approaches they are taking (at a guess).
No, no, and no. 512 cpus (4 racks) is the bigest a prepackaged system gets. Above that you have to call them to build you a system. SGI built a 6144 cpu system for LANL in 1998. I think it is safe to say that SGI can go as big as your budget will allow and then some, you just need to call them.
MIPS is also an open architecutre. You can license the ISA and design your own chips. MIPS has one of the cleanest and most compact/RISC-like ISAs around and it is easily extended. MIPS is often the choice of ppl. needing good, fast, cheap chips for their produts (Nintendo, Sony, and other consumer electronics). While MIPS was spun-off from SGI a while back SGI still retains their own design team and the IP surrounding the R10K, R12K, R14K and any future chips. I beleive NEC and/or Toshiba fabs SGIs chips these days.
Slashdot Mirror
They release new IRIX/MIPS stuff and it's canned as being proprietary/too-slow/too-expensive/beaten-by-my-P4 /beaten-by-a-beowulf/etc.
I'd have thought that all you Linux-boys would be wetting your pants at this latest announcement (which everyone familiar with SGI knew was comming months ago). Instead it looks like most people haven't even read the article yet are eager to shit on this new HPC platform.
The best comparision I can come up with is Average Slashdotter == Import Rice Boy.
Both love their shitty cobbled together kit and lack any understanding of the complexities of such systems. Both will horribly hack up and mod everything they can to the detriment of real performance. And both love to trash high-end stuff they don't understand and which they'll never lay a filthy a finger on.
I Guess that's why I stick to comp.arch & comp.sys.sgi.* for (mostly) intelligent/robust/informative posts.
The only difference is that IBM doesn't even have a product yet, and may never, and SGI has been shipping modular ccNUMA systems for 3+ years.
This post was incorrect when it showed up in the MIPS R16000 thread and it's even more incorrect in this thread. The fact that it has been modded up is just a sad comment about the meat-wads that wander through slashdot.
Wow, the ignorance drippin off that statement caused me to slip and fall.
> I really can't imagine who is still buying SGIs.
...
/ oc tober/q1_results.html
n ta tions/shareholder_meeting_2002.pdf
Here are the figures you can't imagine:
32% Government & Defense
28% Science
21% Manufacturing
12% Media
7% Energy
Or looking at it another way
Servers accounted for 38% of fiscal 2001 revenues; Global services, 37%; Visual Workstations, 19% and Other, 6%
See:
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2002
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/investors/prese
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/factsheet.html
The Indy is cool but it's very old. The platform is approaching 10 years. I've got a maxxed out Indy with video I/O and mjpeg compression. A better machine would be an O2 with A/V, Vivo (SD Video) and DVLink (FireWire).
With prices the way they are you would be wise to get a low end Octane. Cheap (~$200), much much faster, still very cool.
The accuracy is neccessary for complex lighting, transparency effects and so on, 8-bit alpha sucks. The output is 10-bits per component.
s .h tml
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/octane2/graphic
P4 != IA64
Bother to read a bit will you. I bet you're thinking of the SGI Itanium2 NUMAflex system(s) that have made the news recently.
I'm curious how this sort of thing gets spread around. If I had a nickle for every time ...
Are there underground PC/LINUX sites that like to spread rumors about SGI? What about SUN, HP, IBM?
See: http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/2831.pdf
Just remember that it is a little out of date, ignore any reference to WindowsNT/2000 or IA32.
There are many SGI systems running over 1000 CPUs, LANL has a 6144 CPU installation.
If you read John Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper you'll see that such systems can be configured in a mind-boggling number of ways. So SGI packages certain common/sensible configs. You can give them your credit card and call in an order for a preconfigured 512 CPU machine, no prob. If you want 1024 CPUs, or 2048 CPUs, or more you have to sit down, have a nice lunch with them, and talk about your exact needs so they can spec a system for you.
When making perf. statements these kind of articles are always misleading. They upgraded from old SGI hardware running IRIX to new *whatever* hardware running LINUX. Yeah, I'm sure all your perf. belong to LINUX.
Which building? I've seen some impressive workstations in Courant but no mainframes.
You have a typo in 'redemption.'
These type of machines are their biggest sellers, so much so that I think their worstation line is suffering. There is a sizeable market for machines of this size and larger. You can browser through their newsroom to see who is buying what and how many.
SGI maintains a sizeable inventory of Origin and Onyx parts along with all their other products. They literally get the components off the shelf.
For the most part SGI systems are highly standard. They only vary when the customer has big $$$ (like Lockheed or the NSA) and asks for specific changes.
Your second point is really good, one gets what one pays for.
For the high end I'd like to see 2U workstations using NUMAflex (same chipset from O3x00), with one or two CPUs, room for 16GB RAM, and better-than-VPRO graphics which can be repurposed and racked up to form a large SiS ccNUMA system with the ability to chain together each units graphics cards in a manner similar to InfinitePerformance graphics as seen on Onyx300/3000. HP sells Itanium2 2U systems simliar to what I've described except that when racked up they form a cluster and not a large NUMA machine, and they have nothing like IP graphics.
...
For the low end I'd like to see a compactified Fuel or similar using either MIPS or Itanium2 (which ever is cheaper) and V12 graphics for under $6000.
Sweet speculation
Please people take the time to understand before you let shiat fall out your mouth. That is 3.2GB/s of peak dedicated bandwidth through a point to point high-speed non-blocking crossbar. SGI systems don't use a bus based topology. That means that you can have 3.2GB/s from CPUMEM at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from I/ODISK at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from GFXCPU (sustained 2.4GB/s). Each router supports 8 connections at 3.2GB/s (1.6GB/s down 1.6GB/s up). And this is for their workstations, the new Origins bump things up a notch.
When you see that a PC can do X.XGB/s peak that bandwitch is shared by all subsystems attatched to the bus.
The main CPU in an desktop SGI system is matched just to fit this architecture. Whilst your AMD system is sitting idle 65% of the time waiting for data to get where it's going and dealing with bus contention issues and a crappy MSFT OS.
Read through Ian Mapleson's Octane Architecture paper to get a better idea of the tech. that goes into an SGI workstation. Please also note that the Octane is a system from 1997 and no longer sold (only on eBay), the Octane2 is faster, and the Fuel is much faster though only offers 1 CPU.
Untrue and untrue.
ASCI Blue Mountain is an O2K with 6144 CPUs, it lives at LANL.
See also #52 from www.top500.org:
SGI ORIGIN 2000 250 MHz LANL/ACL USA 1999 2048CPUs.
That's 2048CPUs. SGI only sells pre-configed systems up to 512 CPUs, otherwise you have to call them and go out to lunch before they sell you several thousand processors.
SI/SSI still rips-it up when it comes to CAD. Load up a 2000+ part assy in Pro/ENGINEER and a couple of windows with smaller parts and drawings and can watch the fastest PC crap out. The Octane just asks for more. MaxIMPACT with TRAM installed is $250 if you know where to go. No one pays the prices listed on reseller pages. Notice also that SGI hasn't sold Indigo2s in many many years, all those prices are from resellers/junk collectors so you can't blame SGI for their high price. As per an extra $400 to upgrade to SE, not if you know where to buy. I can get a complete Octane system with SE for under $400. An entire system with MXE can be had for just under $1500. So the prices you're seeing are way way high an don't reflect what a half-way intelligent person would pay. IRIX is not a product, they do not sell it for any amount of money, it is bundled with the hardware. You can purchase media with a basic right to use/no warranty/no liability/no support for $600. Though you'd be wise to just go to eBay and pay $100 - $150 for a set of media. No such thing as a Personal Onyx, unless you've got some unreleased/strange hardware. Perhaps you have a Personal IRIS (very old). But the R4400 would indicate not. Anyway, the other systems you list are still valueable and quite useful. I use various SGIs for all sorts of things and for the money 2nd-hand systems are a great deal, lots of fun, work increadibly well for certain tasks, and they look really cool. Lastly, there is no $60K Fuel. Fuel starts at $11K and can more than double. A maxxed out Octane2 with 2 CPUs and tons of RAM and every option card you can find including DM6 might push the price to $60K. As per usefull software, anything by Discreet is amazing on an Octane2.
What you quoted is wrong. 1 CX Brick = 4U = 16 CPUs. That's 4 CPUs per 1U of space. A single rack can take 4 CX Bricks = 128 CPUs in 16U of space. That rack also contains an R brick (router), various I/O bricks, disk arrays, and you can squeeze in several InfiniteReality4 pipes. Then you can take 4 racks and combine them for 512CPUs (4 CPUs per 1U, 128CPUs taking up 16U per rack). All one shared memory system. The Athlon system you mention is packing 2 CPUs per 1U of space (half as dense per U), probably 1 or 2 drives, maybe room for 1 or 2 expansion cards, and a decent amount of RAM, all filling up one rack. Makes a nice cluster. Everyone knows the Athlon is memory starved. It's not faster than MIPS on many real work loads. Anyway, it doesn't compare to what SGI is selling. The comparison is like saying a riced-up turbo Honda will beat a Ferrari ... well maybe on a drag strip but dragging is for monkeys, track 'em and watch the Ferrari lap the Honda, that's if the Honda doesn't blow it's engine first.
Sounds like you've never used a Challenge or an Origin system before. As per the top 100, it will take a large customer who asks for large system (5,000CPUs+) to get SGI on the list. SGI doesn't build these things for the record books they build them for customers. Even a smaller Origin3900 system beats several of the top systems in memory bandwidth. > There product fills a very small niche, yet all > the stupid kids like you think they're so neat. My two Indys fill a niche on my desk and I prefer using them to my PC. I'm guessing you're talking out your ass, what SGI systems do you have on your desk? > As an aside the open critical component in a > supercomputer is memory, fast memory, whith out > that it matters not a jot how quickly your > processors work. So what is the memory > bandwidth of this baby? You can read about the latency in John Mashey's NUMAflex paper, though I beleive they've improved on this. As per bandwidth, I think it is 13.2GB point to point. Total system bandwidth scales linearly with each CX brick and supporting router. Remember though that this is dedicated bandwidth through a crossbar not the shared bandwidth of a bus. Either way I believe SGI has the highest sustained-bandwidth systems currently on the market. Their Origin-Itanium2 systems set a worldrecord 120GB/s on STREAM. Maybe some highend 1-offs beat it but essentially SGI's NUMA systems are the Ferraris of the computing industry.
You're in the gutter swearing at the stars, boy.
Note though: the SGI press release states that it only scales to 512 processors. it looks like they are having problems scaling beyond that. It is probably having to do with the interconnect and SSI approaches they are taking (at a guess).
No, no, and no. 512 cpus (4 racks) is the bigest a prepackaged system gets. Above that you have to call them to build you a system. SGI built a 6144 cpu system for LANL in 1998. I think it is safe to say that SGI can go as big as your budget will allow and then some, you just need to call them.
This is just ignorant.
MIPS is also an open architecutre. You can license the ISA and design your own chips. MIPS has one of the cleanest and most compact/RISC-like ISAs around and it is easily extended. MIPS is often the choice of ppl. needing good, fast, cheap chips for their produts (Nintendo, Sony, and other consumer electronics). While MIPS was spun-off from SGI a while back SGI still retains their own design team and the IP surrounding the R10K, R12K, R14K and any future chips. I beleive NEC and/or Toshiba fabs SGIs chips these days.
I see lots of errors and misunderstandings here. Apparently people have a hard time understanding tech. that is not in thier PC.
NUMAflex is the coolest concept in systems architecture today. I'm eager to see some trickle down into lower-end markets.
Read this before you post:
John Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper.