Building The MareNostrum COTS Supercomputer 187
karvind writes "IBM Power Architecture Community Newsletter has a story about making a supercomputer (Number 4 on top 500 list) from easily available components (like BladeCenter and TotalStorage servers, 970FX PowerPC processors, and Linux 2.6). A joint venture between IBM and the Spanish government, it is named MareNostrum: the Latin term meaning 'our sea.' Peaking at 40 TFlops, the beast consists of 2,282 IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 blade servers housed in 163 BladeCenter chassis, 4,564 64-bit IBM PowerPC 970FX processors, and 140 TB of IBM TotalStorage DS4100 storage servers."
and in 32 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Off who's shelf? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, like I regularly go to Fry's to stock up on some DS4100s and Bladecenters. I'd love to be the geek for whom that stuff is "off-the-shelf". Can you even buy bare PPC CPUs and mobos?
Re:War in the age of information warfare (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone's been watching too much 24.
WHAT'S WITH THE FREE ADVERTISING? (Score:2, Insightful)
The MareNostrum supercomputer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ranked number four in the world in speed in November 2004, is constructed of such totally off-the-shelf parts as IBM BladeCenter JS20 servers, 64-bit 970FX PowerPC processors, TotalStorage DS4100 storage servers, and Linux 2.6
That's it - the first sentence of the article, if you exclude the title, the credits and the date, that is.
And we can already call advertising bullshit. I'm sorry, but how is the MareNostrum system made of any more "totally off-the-shelf" parts than the number two system on the Top500, NASA's very own Columbia? In fact, the 64-bit 970FX PowerPC processor is NOT an off-the-shelf part: unlike the Itanium 2 CPUs in Columbia, you can NOT buy such CPUs individually (for good reason: unlike the Itanium CPUs in Columbia, MareNostrum's CPUs are not socketed but soldered to the JS20 system board, so there goes upgradeability...)
Seriously though, why should we give a rat's ass about MareNostrum? Columbia is faster, more efficient, really is made from off-the-shelf parts and also runs Linux.
What's that? Oh, IBM are a good company and SGI aren't? For fuck's sake, SGI are better friends of Linux than IBM are. What did IBM do for linux? Nothing compared to SGI. IBM ported JFS, a crappy journaling filesystem, oh and they ported it to their own POWER/PowerPC architecture systems. W00p!
SGI:
- Gave Linux XFS, one of the fastest filesystems around, with _many_ advanced features (just look in your kernel config sometime)
- Scaled Linux beyond 64 CPUs for the first time (and indeed, they hold the record at 2,048CPUs): they fixed a _ton_ of scalability problems, and continue to do this on a daily basis (just look at this week's archive of the linux-ia64 mailing list to see what I mean!)
- Open sourced their Itanium compiler
- Created OpenGL (notice carefully the Open in OpenGL. You can bet your bottom dollar if IBM created a funky new graphics API it would _only_ work on PowerPC machines with IBM video hardware!)
Yada yada. All I'm trying to say is there are other companies out there who have really taken Linux to heart and have made open source development in their best interest, not just IBM. SGI is just one example, there are many others.
Re:Off who's shelf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you "can't" buy the stuff in pieces (IBM will probably gladly sell you the stuff as spare parts, if you prefer to assemble it yourself) doesn't mean it's not off the shelf.
Re:Beowulf cluster? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares about easily available? (Score:1, Insightful)
Screw easily available. Anyone with a budget to buy 2,282 servers and 4,564 processors can afford custom parts.
Call me when it's also easily affordable and I can pick up the parts at my local Fry's, or better yet, my local supermarket.
The only real item of interest was that it was made with all IBM parts and Linux.
...
Come to think of it, if Fry's also sold groceries I won't have to shop anywhere else...
Re:Off who's shelf? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a beefy computer (Score:2, Insightful)
but I bet Windows still runs slow on it.
Re:Off who's shelf? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not holding my breath for these. Call me when I can get a decent motherboard with a 1GHz processor for less than $200.
Supercomputer = Pile of computers? (Score:2, Insightful)
riiight . . . easily available components (Score:2, Insightful)
In what world is 163 BladeCenter chassis, 4,564 64-bit IBM PowerPC 970FX processors, and 140 TB of IBM TotalStorage DS4100 storage servers easily available??? Maybe if you are Big Blue, but then, why would it be more difficult for them to throw together a fully proprietary supercomputer?
Re:riiight . . . easily available components (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:War in the age of information warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that these are Top500 KNOWN supercomputers.
It's quite possible that many more computers that exist but are operating under classified conditions. For instance I would be suprised if the NSA had something for breaking crypto that rivaled some of the machines in the top 50 or so super computers, but it's not something that would appear on this list. This is for boasting rights only, if a place chooses not to publicize their computer, it won't end up on the list.
American computers pretty much dominate. Some like the Spainish one are built by American companies (like IBM), but just happen to be installed in foreign places.
Now the NEC Earth Simulator is a BIG exception. It dominated the top 500 for a considurable period of time and is completely japanese built, designed and owned. It is a huge technological acheivement and the pinnacle of technology for it's day. It's hard to relate to how significant it was. It is the top of the line when it comes to old-school massively parrallel supercomputers, blew American supercomputers out of the water.
But along came Linux clusters (which in many ways is competely unsuitable for some of the things that Earth Simulator can do) and now Blue Gene. Which can possibly do twice the work as Earth Simulator, but consumes a fraction of the power and space needed to house these types of computers.
Re:War in the age of information warfare (Score:3, Insightful)
I shudder to think of what a "Secretary of Information Technology" would be. In my tinfoil sheilded skull I imagine a jack boot on the throat of the internet.