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Comments: 260 +- Hardware: Asus Releases Desktop-Sized Supercomputer on Tuesday October 27, @01:12AM
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angry tapir writes "Asustek has unveiled its first supercomputer, the desktop computer-sized ESC 1000, which uses Nvidia graphics processors to attain speeds up to 1.1 teraflops. Asus's ESC 1000 comes with a 3.33GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 microprocessor designed for servers, along with 960 graphics processing cores from Nvidia inside three Tesla c1060 Computing Processors and one Quadro FX5800."
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wow (Score:2, Funny)
and it's much cheaper and more effective than just using multiple multi-core processors. parallel computing is the future. how long before we have three dimensional processors?
Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
How many pets would I have to eat to balance out the carbon footprint of this?
I've got a six-pack of kittens at the ready.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
The PSU is only 1100W. It's not that intensive - three teslas are like three big graphics cards. 2 or 3 kittens would be sufficient, so you've got enough to share.
Do you have pepper sauce?
Parent
Eat a vacuum cleaner (Score:5, Funny)
The PSU is only 1100W. It's not that intensive - three teslas are like three big graphics cards. 2 or 3 kittens would be sufficient, so you've got enough to share.
1100W? Can I eat my vacuum cleaner instead? Yummy.
Do you have pepper sauce?
Pepper sauce? Pepper sauce?!? Do you have any idea what the carbon footprint of pepper sauce is? My brother ate pepper sauce once. He had to eat a whole zoo full of animals to make up for it! Stay away from the sauce!
Parent
Re:Eat a vacuum cleaner (Score:5, Funny)
>Pepper sauce? Pepper sauce?!? Do you have any idea what the carbon footprint of pepper sauce is? My brother ate pepper sauce once. He had to eat a whole zoo full of animals to make up for it! Stay away from the sauce!
But it's *green* pepper !
Parent
Re:Hrmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The PSU is only 1100W
Only? That's more juice than your microwave (~750 watts), toaster (~1kw), more like a space heater. This thing sucks electricity HARD. A Vaccuum cleaner is about 500-700 watts. I don't think my electric clothes dryer uses as much electricity as this thing, which is using ten times the juice a normal PC uses (or more).
I doubt you have a single appliance in your house that uses much more electricity than this, and those appliances, unlike a computer, don't run 24/7.
The pot growers use 650 watt lights. If you get one of these computers, expect to be raided by the DEA when the electric company narcs on you and the DEA sees the heat signature through your walls. They'll have a no-knock warrant, and you'll be lucky if they don't shoot you. They WILL have you face down on the ground with your hands cuffed behind your back. When they find it's a computer and not a pot growing operation, they'll just plant half a pound of dope and arrest you anyway.
That is, if you survive their entrance. Maybe this will be a good thing, when the DEA starts killing too many innocent people maybe we'll rethink our stupid, insane drug laws.
Wow. I started counting the number of low estimates in your post and lost track. 1200 Watt microwaves are a dime a dozen. Then we have the 1400 Watt toaster ovens, and 1500 Watt space heaters. And I'm NOT going out of my way to find high numbers... in fact, for every one of these, I quick found items that were considerably more power. We can keep going with your poor estimates: a 4000 Watt clothes dryer and the 180-200 Watt 3 GHz Pentium 4 computer. In fact, the only number you appear to be accurate on is the pot growing (according to Google. I don't like the smell).
So really, what everyone wants to know is: when did you start growing pot?
Marc
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Re:Hrmm (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Boinc Applications... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a participant in the Milky Way and SETI projects for BOINC, I can say this development is impressive and would be a cruncher's dream come true. It would put supercomputing power in the hands of the everyman and allow applications that rely on distributed computing to take a leap forward.
Re:Boinc Applications... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Boinc Applications... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, as long as that everyman can afford $14,519 for crunching purposes...
For that price I'd build myself a real virtual reality gaming room.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I can't imagine anyone buying such a machine specifically to run SETI@Home or similar projects. If you want/need a machine like this you will have a specific use for it, as I don't think it's that speedy for most games etc - to run your projects on graphics cores you will need special software, this is useless for generic computing. And those distributed projects are set up with the idea of using spare cycles - not to buy hardware specifically for it.
Now if you still happen to have spare time on the comput
Re: (Score:2)
As a participant in the Milky Way and SETI projects for BOINC, I can say this development is impressive and would be a cruncher's dream come true. It would put supercomputing power in the hands of the everyman and allow applications that rely on distributed computing to take a leap forward.
BOINC already supports CUDA & has alpha(?) support for ATI's version.
There's nothing stopping you from packing a tower with graphics cards and a high end PSU.
You could of course get it in 2U last year (Score:2)
Now they're copying Apple too!? (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Eb1yih5kNY [youtube.com]
I remember when that ad came out. I was so pissed. Apple preys on people who have no concept of the scale of computing and this campaign really got under my skin. Now I just laugh at it, but they're still advertising this way, with their comparison charts and graphs touting biggest and best with comparisons to competitors' computing hardware from years past.
Index? (Score:3, Funny)
The real question of course is, what the "Windows Vista experience index" of this machine is. If it's anywhere below 5.5 it's obviously not worth the bother.
Super computer? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm isn't this just a ridiculously powerful desktop computer rather than a super computer? The current 500th super computer on the top500 list is this machine [top500.org] which has a Rmax of 17 Tflops and an Rpeak of just over 37.6. Now its impressive that this desktop system has 1/37th of the power of the lowest machine on the super computer list... but does that really make it a super computer? Moore's Law says that it will take around 10 years for this desktop box to evolve to the power of that current bottom top500 box. So in other words its 10 years behind the performance of the current 500th best super computer.
If its because it hits 1 Tflops then in a few years time you'll have mobile phone "super computers" as Moore's Law is still moving onwards.
This is a very very fast desktop computer suited to certain simulation elements which are GPU intensive. Nice box, fast box.... but not a real modern super computer.
Re:Super computer? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, that's easy enough. Just get 38 of these things, hook'em together and MosesJones, you will have #500 on that list!
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So in other words its 10 years behind the performance of the current 500th best super computer.
If the top500 list is really a good indicator, this system would have definitely made the 2004/06 list and maybe the 2004/11. You can basically build a 5 year old top 500 supercomputer today for $15k. It would have been top 10 in 1999/06. So it's 10 years from top 10 supercomputer to a personal, desktop "super"-computer but it'll probably take even less time for today's fastest machines to become affordable.
Also remember this is your personal supercomputer. It's working on your jobs 24/7. And really, 1/40th
Re:Super computer? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Supercomputer" might mean cluster, a big node (to go in a cluster), or big-iron mainframe.
It's not a cluster, and it's not much of a mainframe, but it has a helluva lot of FLOPS for a single node. To me, it looks similar to the nodes that went into Roadrunner's TriBlades - 2 Opterons (as general purpose processors) plus 4 PowerXCell 8i (for heavyweight vector processing), and a total of 16G memory. But I'm not an expert.
Still, I bet that if you could hook 3240 of them together, you would have a strong Top500 contender.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Please ignore parent comment. I realized the obvious error, stemming from the misinformation in GP comment.
Re:Super computer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Supercomputer is a computer that is one of the most powerful computers available at a given time. Therefore referring top500 list is very valid when determining what is supercomputer and what isn't. Top500 list can very well be used in determining whether we have a supercomputer or not. If the modern computer isn't faster (at least in certain specific tasks) than the lowest performing computer on the list I wouldn't consider it being a supercomputer. I don't understand the need to dilute supercomputer word to include cheap hacks like this, there are valid names for these such as minicomputer. What do we call the best performing computer? superdupercomputer?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, supercomputer is not strictly defined with any of the characteristics other than being one of the most powerful computers available at a given time. We cannot take away 90's supercomputer titles just because current desktops outperform them. Supercomputer is not a term that describes performance, it's all about prestige and engineering prowess to be one of the best in the world.
This Asus can be technologically more advanced or faster than any supercomputer of 90's but it will never has such prestige
But how can you trust the results? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Tesla c1060 [nvidia.com] processor boards sound like a very efficient way of packing in compute power, but unless they're neglecting to mention it, the 4GB of GDDR3 RAM each has on board has no error correction. Given the rates of correctable errors observed e.g. here [toronto.edu], I could never recommend using it for computing simulations that matter. A flipped bit in a floating point number can have a disproportionate affect on the outcome of calculations that rely upon it, and short of running the whole simulation a second or third time, one couldn't be confident that such an error did not occur.
Large compute-intensive simulations can take weeks, and are used to justify engineering and business decisions that involve the disposition of large amounts of money and other resources — it is important that the computational part of the process can be relied upon.
Re:But how can you trust the results? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a student at the University of Washington and once talked to a representative for Cray about using GPU's a a cheaper supercomputer and he told me that they generally have a nontrivial error rate. The issue with using ECC memory is that the GPU's are also libel for errors within their computations, making the ECC RAM pointless. A weird pixel in one frame of a game is no problem, but an error when performing a large simulation creates problems if the algorithm isn't designed to compensate for that noise.
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Re:But how can you trust the results? (Score:5, Informative)
Then you would be happy to know that Nvidia's new Fermi chip supports ECC throughout the architecture.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:But how can you trust the results? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Tesla c1060 [nvidia.com] processor boards sound like a very efficient way of packing in compute power, but unless they're neglecting to mention it, the 4GB of GDDR3 RAM each has on board has no error correction. Given the rates of correctable errors observed e.g. here [toronto.edu], I could never recommend using it for computing simulations that matter. A flipped bit in a floating point number can have a disproportionate affect on the outcome of calculations that rely upon it, and short of running the whole simulation a second or third time, one couldn't be confident that such an error did not occur.
Large compute-intensive simulations can take weeks, and are used to justify engineering and business decisions that involve the disposition of large amounts of money and other resources — it is important that the computational part of the process can be relied upon.
Which is why the upcoming NVIDIA "Fermi" GPU based boards will support 4GB of ECC memory. Also, they'll have about 2 TFLOPS of single-precision power, and you can stack 4 of them in a box = 8 TFLOPS beside your desk.
I can't wait until the US government starts banning these things because they could be used by terrorists to design nuclear weapons or something. 8)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Keep in mind that TFLOP is not a single benchmark. There's theoretical peak and then there's actual linpack performance. Single precision is rarely good enough for simulations, they all use double. Naturally, all marketing slicks like to talk about single precision theoretical peak because it's a nice big number, but you'll NEVER actually see that, even in a benchmark. If you're very lucky, your actual practical performance will be in the same neighborhood as the linpack double precision benchmark.
Re: (Score:2)
A flipped bit in a floating point number can have a disproportionate affect on the outcome of calculations that rely upon it, and short of running the whole simulation a second or third time, one couldn't be confident that such an error did not occur.
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
-Contact [imdb.com]
TFA says something about "US$14,519 over five years" for one box
Is that cheap enough to justify buying twice what you need and running the simulation in parallel?
As an aside, the biggest problem I see is that it 'only' has 24GB of RAM.
In my uninformed opinion, that doesn't seem nearly enough for supercomputing purposes.
Not long ago (Score:3, Informative)
The Cray T3E-1200E reached 1 teraflops in 1998. Now, we can reach that same level of performance (depending on the app) with a desktop computer. How time flys...
Re:Not long ago (Score:4, Interesting)
We've had over a teraflop of single precision available to consumers in graphics card form for a few years now; the newly released ATI 5870 actually has more than double that in a single chip. Soon the 5870 x2 (with double the performance again) will be out and you'll be able to have multiple of those in one PC.
Parent
WIndows 7 not Vista? (Score:2, Interesting)
processors to attain speeds up to 1.1 teraflops.
So you're saying it's fast enough to run Windows 7, but forget Vista?
Thats not a super desktop computer idea (Score:5, Interesting)
http://helmer.sfe.se/ [helmer.sfe.se]
needs more "super" (Score:2)
Asustek has unveiled its first supercomputer... (Score:2, Insightful)
How about non Floating Point performance ? (Score:5, Insightful)
San somebody who has actually worked with such machines enlighten me about its performance on tasks that are not floating point intensive? Our simulations mainly push many,many objects around, with relatively little, or no floating point math in them.
Do such machines still make sense, or are we better off with a bunch of general purpose CPUs clustered together? How do they compare to Suns Niagara cpus that have umpteen hardware threads in them ?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in military research in the UK, we've been building similar machines to this general spec (Xeon/Nehalem/Nvidia Teslas/loads of RAM) for a year of so now. This type of machine is pretty amazing for running our engineering codes; we've achieved a 30x speed up in some cases when compared to a regular high end desktop PC, running a variety of fluid dynamics codes.
Although it's not a high priority to my management, I personally think the power consumption of the Teslas when compared to regular super compu
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
While this sort of machine is useful (I just built one for quantum Monte Carlo calculations 6 months ago) it is hardly news. NVIDIA has been pushing this sort of machine since the launch of the Tesla. In fact, they have had a parts list on their website [nvidia.com] for some time telling exactly what is needed to put together a computer with 4 C1060's. This is not even the first commercial offering of this nature, with companies like appro [appro.com] and microway [microway.com] having similar products for at least a year (see nvidia [nvidia.com]) for a more complete list.
!Supercomputer (Score:3, Interesting)
If they can call a custom desktop PC a supercomputer, because it has specs that used to be in the range of supercomputers, then my wristwatch is also a supercomputer.
Re:No point running desktop Windows on this monste (Score:5, Insightful)
While I wouldn't choose to do my scientific computing on Windows, I know some people do, and those Tesla cards (which are providing the bulk of the processing power) really don't care which OS you're running.
Parent
Re:No point running desktop Windows on this monste (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No point running desktop Windows on this monste (Score:4, Funny)
Nah - with such processing power, one might actually see a Windows machine perform properly! From boot to blue screen of death in mere milliseconds! Run your malware faster than ever! See clippy dance furiously across the screen in smooth 250 fps animation!
Parent
Re:No point running desktop Windows on this monste (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you referring to Republic of China or People's Republic of China? ASUSTek is from Republic of China.
But think of the fun with people who don't know... (Score:2)
Not an Eee! (Score:5, Funny)
I was expecting it to be called the Eee-1. But EEE-niac would have been cool too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)