First off Big Blue is Big and Blue but definitely not #1 in High Performance Technical Computing the Alpha has been there for years. If I could make that period any larger I would.
What they are is large and have a lot of accounts in business computing i.e. IBM. Still the stock exchange and banks seems to like Alpha running Tru64 and OpenVMS, oh by the way so does the federal government, but I digress.
The IA-64 or Itanium 2 is an EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) Chip design. The goal is to move beyond the RISC performance bounds with explicit parallel instruction streams. This simple put means that most processors today are 60% idle and of that 40% a whole lot of NOOPS ( no operations, or clock ticks with no work being done) are going on. The chip has a streamlined pipeline, and massive amount of registers 128. Because the compiler does optimize code (at least the HP and Intel complier does) it can handle conditional and/or unpredictable branches in a more efficient way and creates parallel code for the chip.
The late chip now holds very impressive numbers and they will only get better with the next 2 generations already in the pipe, this is a very early chip.
The 4 way OLTP performance is 50% faster than a comparable system and 10% faster than Dells 8-way
HP's Rx5670 performs 50% faster than an 8-way IBM x440 on the SAP-SD benchmark
And the SPECweb99_SSL performance is 1.4 times faster than a 4 way IBM p630 @ 1 GHz.
Oh and did I mention price per performance? Why don't you check it out yourself? In my view it is not a "will it make it" question, it already has. The question is how big will it grow.
HP as developed a lean and mean chipset to support 1-4 CPU model. These production systems cover development machines and system that support SMP technology. Later chip sets will be optimized for VERY LARGE configurations.
What will this chip be used for? Anything! It most assuredly will run Oracle databases, and High Performance Technical computing. It will be incorporated in three tier infrastructures, Storage Area Networks, and VERY, Very large clusters 10,000 seems to be the numbers floating around for a Lustre Linux cluster but that is not a power of 2 is it.
I am not sure where all this disinformation comes from but that is just what it is and is often a marketing/Sales ploy and this is not a good forum for any of that.
That's OK Compaq will sell you and Athlon too since we helped develope that chip to.....but it
will still stand in the dark shadow of the Alpha....Nothing out runs an Alpha !!!
Ohh yea and while I am at it. SUN may have you all fooled with thier "Rock Solid OS" ( Right )
That is why Compaq Tru64 Unix just got voted #1 UNIX and Cluster Unix. Mean while SUN has been throwing CPUS at you ~10%-20% faster than the ave PC on the market for the last 10 years and selling them to you at 10x the price....hat's off to SUN
shame on the fools who paid for them.
I feel the need for SPEED!!!!!
NSF Awards $45 Million to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
for "Terascale" Computing
An unprecedented system located in Pittsburgh will be the most powerful in the world available for public research.
PITTSBURGH - The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has been awarded $45 million from the National Science Foundation to provide "terascale" computing capability for U.S. researchers in all science and engineering disciplines. Through this award, PSC will collaborate with Compaq Computer Corporation to create a new, extremely powerful system for the use of scientists and engineers nationwide.
Terascale refers to computational power beyond a "teraflop" - a trillion calculations per second. While several terascale systems have been developed for classified research at national laboratories, the PSC system will be the most powerful to date designed as an open resource for scientists attacking a wide range of problems. In this respect, it fills a gap in U.S. research capability - highlighted in a 1999 report to President Clinton - and will facilitate progress in many areas of significant social impact, such as the structure and dynamics of proteins useful in drug design, storm-scale weather forecasting, earthquake modeling, and modeling of global climate change.
The three-year award, effective Oct. 1, is based on PSC's proposal to provide a system, installed and available for use in 2001, with peak performance exceeding six teraflops. To achieve this, PSC and Compaq proposed a system architecture, based on existing or soon to be available components, optimized to the computational requirements posed by a wide range of research applications and which, at this level of performance, pushes beyond simple evolution of existing technology.
- more -
The brain of the proposed six teraflop system will be an interconnected network of Compaq AlphaServers, 682 of them, each of which itself contains four Compaq Alpha microprocessors. Existing terascale systems rely on other processors, but extensive testing by PSC and others indicates that the Alpha processor offers superior performance over a range of applications.
Development of this system will draw on a history of collaboration between PSC and Compaq, and represents an extension of PSC's history of success at installing untried, new systems - resolving the myriad of unanticipated hardware and software glitches that come up - and turning them over rapidly to the scientific community as productive research tools.
The PSC terascale system, to be located at the Westinghouse Energy Center, Monroeville, will be a component of NSF's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program, supplementing other computational resources available to U. S. scientists and engineers.
"The PSC has - with its partners at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Westinghouse - an excellent record of installing innovative, high-performance systems and operating them to maximize research productivity," said NSF director Rita Colwell.
"We're pleased that NSF's terascale initiative gives us this opportunity to use PSC's proven capability in high-performance computing, communications and informatics in support of the national research effort," said PSC scientific directors Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies in a joint statement. "Working in partnership with Compaq, we'll create a system that enables U.S. researchers to attack the most computationally challenging problems in engineering and science."
"Compaq is looking forward to working with the National Science Foundation and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and we are committed to the success of the terascale initiative," said Michael Capellas, Compaq's president and CEO. "With our AlphaServer systems and Tru64 UNIX, we are providing the technology infrastructure for some of the most advanced computing projects in the world. This is further proof of Compaq's leadership in high-performance computing and our commitment to help open new frontiers in science and technology."
Development and implementation of the terascale system, including software and networking, will draw on fundamental research in computer science. A significant strength of PSC is its tri-partite affiliation with Westinghouse and with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and the pooled computing-related expertise of faculty and staff at both universities.
"This award, which comes as the culmination of a national competition, recognizes PSC's leadership in high-performance computing and communications," said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon. "And it provides another key building block for our region's technology future, enhancing our international stature in the development and application of advanced computing technology."
- more -
"A gap exists between the computing resources available to the classified world and the open scientific community," said Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. "It is ideal that PSC, a world leader in acquiring and deploying early the most powerful computers for science and engineering, can contribute to filling this gap. This award also demonstrates the unique scientific strengths that exist in Pittsburgh when its major research universities partner with each other and with leaders in industry."
"Today's terascale award is one more in a long list of PSC's major achievements," said Charlie Pryor, president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company. "Westinghouse is proud of PSC's contribution to the nation's scientific community and is pleased to have been associated with PSC since its inception."
Under the proposal, PSC will by the end of this year install an initial system with a peak performance of 0.4 teraflops. The six teraflop system, which will use faster Compaq Alpha microprocessors not yet available, will evolve from this system. The four-processor AlphaServers use high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect technology developed by Compaq through a U.S. Department of Energy advanced technology program.
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with the Westinghouse Electric Company. It was established in 1986 and is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry.
# # #
An artist's rendition of PSC's proposed terascale system and examples of potential research applications are available at: http://www.psc.edu/publicinfo/tcs
For the record BSD has a 4 CD set that has 4x more software that REDHAT bundles up. Personally it seems like your boss is a bit misinformed or thinks life will be easiler if everyone is assimilated. *grin* Me I run them all and I'll still pay for Compaq/Digital Tru64 UNIX. Still the best unix in my book so far.
If you think a Celeron can out perform and Alpha buy it *shrug*. http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/specf p.html http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/speci nt.html
Well I hope that comment is in the minority. Compaq (Compaq/Digital/Tandem) Has some of the top engineers and programs in the world employed. Many of them have openly supported and add to the Open Source community as individuals and have supported Linux/FreeBSD for years. Where do you think Linux on Alpha came from? The driver support? Many people make up the open Source community. Some of them also have kids to feed. "Work to Live, Don't Live to work"
We have had numerous University Professors looking over our systems and none have noticed any "OVERHEATING" issues that I know of. The GUN compiler does not produce optimium code for Alpha. Try the Compaq C and Fortran compilers out. They have been know to produce executables 4X faster than the GNU compiler.
Yes, I can comment. The GNU compiler never was very optimal for the Alpha architeture. The ccc complier is a close brother to the Tru64 compiler that has had years of time invested on making sure it produces outstanding results on the Alpha processor. There numerous switches to optimize with.
Check ouot the lastest Benchmarks..... http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/speci nt.html and http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/specf p.html See anything interesting there???
Slashdot Mirror
Sparc? Sparc has never been on the average about 10% fast than the X86 equivelent. What are you talking about here? I miss the relevence.
First off Big Blue is Big and Blue but definitely not #1 in High Performance Technical Computing the Alpha has been there for years. If I could make that period any larger I would.
What they are is large and have a lot of accounts in business computing i.e. IBM.
Still the stock exchange and banks seems to like Alpha running Tru64 and OpenVMS, oh by the way so does the federal government, but I digress.
The IA-64 or Itanium 2 is an EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) Chip design. The goal is to move beyond the RISC performance bounds with explicit parallel instruction streams. This simple put means that most processors today are 60% idle and of that 40% a whole lot of NOOPS ( no operations, or clock ticks with no work being done) are going on. The chip has a streamlined pipeline, and massive amount of registers 128. Because the compiler does optimize code (at least the HP and Intel complier does) it can handle conditional and/or unpredictable branches in a more efficient way and creates parallel code for the chip.
The late chip now holds very impressive numbers and they will only get better with the next 2 generations already in the pipe, this is a very early chip.
Processor, Clock speed, Transistors, sys bus bandwidth, SPEC INT 2000, SPEC FP 2000
Itanium 2, 1Ghz 221M 6.4 GB/Sec, 810, 1431
Alpha 21264C, 1.25Ghz, 15M, 8GB/Sec, 928, 1327
P4, 3.066Ghz, 55M, 4.2GB/Sec, 1130, 1103
Power 4+, 1.45Ghz, 7.2GG/Sec, 935, 1295
The 4 way OLTP performance is 50% faster than a comparable system and 10% faster than Dells 8-way
HP's Rx5670 performs 50% faster than an 8-way IBM x440 on the SAP-SD benchmark
And the SPECweb99_SSL performance is 1.4 times faster than a 4 way IBM p630 @ 1 GHz.
Oh and did I mention price per performance? Why don't you check it out yourself?
In my view it is not a "will it make it" question, it already has. The question is how big will it grow.
HP as developed a lean and mean chipset to support 1-4 CPU model. These production systems cover development machines and system that support SMP technology. Later chip sets will be optimized for VERY LARGE configurations.
What will this chip be used for? Anything! It most assuredly will run Oracle databases, and High Performance Technical computing. It will be incorporated in three tier infrastructures,
Storage Area Networks, and VERY, Very large clusters 10,000 seems to be the numbers floating around for a Lustre Linux cluster but that is not a power of 2 is it.
I am not sure where all this disinformation comes from but that is just what it is and is often a marketing/Sales ploy and this is not a good forum for any of that.
That's OK Compaq will sell you and Athlon too since we helped develope that chip to.....but it will still stand in the dark shadow of the Alpha....Nothing out runs an Alpha !!! Ohh yea and while I am at it. SUN may have you all fooled with thier "Rock Solid OS" ( Right ) That is why Compaq Tru64 Unix just got voted #1 UNIX and Cluster Unix. Mean while SUN has been throwing CPUS at you ~10%-20% faster than the ave PC on the market for the last 10 years and selling them to you at 10x the price....hat's off to SUN shame on the fools who paid for them. I feel the need for SPEED!!!!!
NSF Awards $45 Million to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for "Terascale" Computing An unprecedented system located in Pittsburgh will be the most powerful in the world available for public research. PITTSBURGH - The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has been awarded $45 million from the National Science Foundation to provide "terascale" computing capability for U.S. researchers in all science and engineering disciplines. Through this award, PSC will collaborate with Compaq Computer Corporation to create a new, extremely powerful system for the use of scientists and engineers nationwide. Terascale refers to computational power beyond a "teraflop" - a trillion calculations per second. While several terascale systems have been developed for classified research at national laboratories, the PSC system will be the most powerful to date designed as an open resource for scientists attacking a wide range of problems. In this respect, it fills a gap in U.S. research capability - highlighted in a 1999 report to President Clinton - and will facilitate progress in many areas of significant social impact, such as the structure and dynamics of proteins useful in drug design, storm-scale weather forecasting, earthquake modeling, and modeling of global climate change. The three-year award, effective Oct. 1, is based on PSC's proposal to provide a system, installed and available for use in 2001, with peak performance exceeding six teraflops. To achieve this, PSC and Compaq proposed a system architecture, based on existing or soon to be available components, optimized to the computational requirements posed by a wide range of research applications and which, at this level of performance, pushes beyond simple evolution of existing technology. - more - The brain of the proposed six teraflop system will be an interconnected network of Compaq AlphaServers, 682 of them, each of which itself contains four Compaq Alpha microprocessors. Existing terascale systems rely on other processors, but extensive testing by PSC and others indicates that the Alpha processor offers superior performance over a range of applications. Development of this system will draw on a history of collaboration between PSC and Compaq, and represents an extension of PSC's history of success at installing untried, new systems - resolving the myriad of unanticipated hardware and software glitches that come up - and turning them over rapidly to the scientific community as productive research tools. The PSC terascale system, to be located at the Westinghouse Energy Center, Monroeville, will be a component of NSF's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program, supplementing other computational resources available to U. S. scientists and engineers. "The PSC has - with its partners at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Westinghouse - an excellent record of installing innovative, high-performance systems and operating them to maximize research productivity," said NSF director Rita Colwell. "We're pleased that NSF's terascale initiative gives us this opportunity to use PSC's proven capability in high-performance computing, communications and informatics in support of the national research effort," said PSC scientific directors Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies in a joint statement. "Working in partnership with Compaq, we'll create a system that enables U.S. researchers to attack the most computationally challenging problems in engineering and science." "Compaq is looking forward to working with the National Science Foundation and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and we are committed to the success of the terascale initiative," said Michael Capellas, Compaq's president and CEO. "With our AlphaServer systems and Tru64 UNIX, we are providing the technology infrastructure for some of the most advanced computing projects in the world. This is further proof of Compaq's leadership in high-performance computing and our commitment to help open new frontiers in science and technology." Development and implementation of the terascale system, including software and networking, will draw on fundamental research in computer science. A significant strength of PSC is its tri-partite affiliation with Westinghouse and with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and the pooled computing-related expertise of faculty and staff at both universities. "This award, which comes as the culmination of a national competition, recognizes PSC's leadership in high-performance computing and communications," said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon. "And it provides another key building block for our region's technology future, enhancing our international stature in the development and application of advanced computing technology." - more - "A gap exists between the computing resources available to the classified world and the open scientific community," said Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. "It is ideal that PSC, a world leader in acquiring and deploying early the most powerful computers for science and engineering, can contribute to filling this gap. This award also demonstrates the unique scientific strengths that exist in Pittsburgh when its major research universities partner with each other and with leaders in industry." "Today's terascale award is one more in a long list of PSC's major achievements," said Charlie Pryor, president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company. "Westinghouse is proud of PSC's contribution to the nation's scientific community and is pleased to have been associated with PSC since its inception." Under the proposal, PSC will by the end of this year install an initial system with a peak performance of 0.4 teraflops. The six teraflop system, which will use faster Compaq Alpha microprocessors not yet available, will evolve from this system. The four-processor AlphaServers use high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect technology developed by Compaq through a U.S. Department of Energy advanced technology program. The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with the Westinghouse Electric Company. It was established in 1986 and is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry. # # # An artist's rendition of PSC's proposed terascale system and examples of potential research applications are available at: http://www.psc.edu/publicinfo/tcs
For the record BSD has a 4 CD set that has 4x more software that REDHAT bundles up. Personally it seems like your boss is a bit misinformed or thinks life will be easiler if everyone is assimilated. *grin* Me I run them all and I'll still pay for Compaq/Digital Tru64 UNIX. Still the best unix in my book so far.
Please seehttp://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/sp ecint.html and http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/specf p.html
If you think a Celeron can out perform and Alpha buy it *shrug*. http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/specf p.html http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/speci nt.html
8 Ds10 Beawulf cluster will arrive any day.
Please read the web page. Accounts are renewable indefiantly in 30 incr.
Well I hope that comment is in the minority. Compaq (Compaq/Digital/Tandem) Has some of the top engineers and programs in the world employed. Many of them have openly supported and add to the Open Source community as individuals and have supported Linux/FreeBSD for years. Where do you think Linux on Alpha came from? The driver support? Many people make up the open Source community. Some of them also have kids to feed. "Work to Live, Don't Live to work"
We have had numerous University Professors looking over our systems and none have noticed any "OVERHEATING" issues that I know of. The GUN compiler does not produce optimium code for Alpha. Try the Compaq C and Fortran compilers out. They have been know to produce executables 4X faster than the GNU compiler.
Yes, I can comment. The GNU compiler never was very optimal for the Alpha architeture. The ccc complier is a close brother to the Tru64 compiler that has had years of time invested on making sure it produces outstanding results on the Alpha processor. There numerous switches to optimize with.
Check ouot the lastest Benchmarks..... http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/speci nt.html and http://ideasinternational.com/benchmark/spec/specf p.html See anything interesting there???