Cray SX-6 Installed in Alaska 198
Dhrakar writes: "Now, I know that normally press releases are imediately round-filed, however, as this is the first NEC^H^H^HCray SX-6 to be installed in the U.S. it is newsworthy. The 8cpu, 64Gb system has been installed at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center for benchmarking and other testing. See either ARSC or the NY Times (sub. required. Yada, yada) article."
for the record. (Score:3, Informative)
Maskirovka
Is a counter troll still a troll?
They're looking for a SysAdmin (Score:5, Informative)
About the Cray SX-6 (Score:3, Informative)
Cray product sheet on the SX-6 [cray.com] (PDF).
I work for the ARSC (Score:5, Informative)
Details are here [arsc.edu]
And yes, you get to play with the new Cray.
For more information, please contact:
Thanks! We're looking for someone with experience with supercomputers.
Maybe that's because... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a measure of clock speed.
It's like saying "This engine tops out at 2000rpm, but this engine here can do 4000rpm"
Is the second a more powerful engine? Hardly.. the first is out of a huge diesel caterpillar; the second is out of 20 year old Honda Civic.
Re:Choice Of Location? (Score:3, Informative)
Fairbanks even holds a few records for the biggest seasonal variances in temperature.
I wouldn't doubt it.
I used to live there some time back. The depths of winter would see super lows around -60F sometimes in town where the ice fog [alaska.edu] and carbon monoxide [alaska.edu] from running vehicles would pile up. (You'd be afraid to turn off your car, too, at those temperatures unless you were near an outlet you could plug your engine block heater and battery warmer into.) Fortunately, on the Fbx campus there are lots of parking spaces with such plugs.
Also, up on the hill where the UAF campus is located, the temperatures in the dead of winter are usually warmer than downtown Fbx, or places southeast of the city (Badger Road).
I could tolerate the cold with minor inconvenience. You can even wear tennis shoes outside quite nicely for up to about 15 minutes at at time - about the time to go between buildings in the worse case. The more insidious drawback to Fbx in the winter is the paucity of daylight. [nami.org]
Summertime high temperatures are usually in the 80s in early July; August is the rainy season. I once saw it go into the low 90's, but that's as unusual as going below -60F in the winter.
Oh, and definitely watch out for the mosquitoes. In the height of the season, the arctic is infested with as many of the little bloodsuckers as the everglades.
Not to be all down on Fairbanks - there's a lot of wonderful scenery (Alaska range to the south, including Denali(/McKinley). Great rivers, fishing, hunting, backpacking, etc. Frequently you can see the aurora borealis in the winter.