Army Contractor To Build A 1566 Xserve Cluster 465
olePigeon (Wik) writes "MacCentral has an interesting article on a new computer cluster. From the article: 'Apple Computer Inc. will announce on Monday the sale of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers to COLSA Corp., which will be used to build what is expected to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The US$5.8 million cluster will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the U.S. Army.'" alset_tech was one of the many readers to point to
CNET's version of the story.
Why the Army? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Funny)
or possibly "wtf how does that thing fly??".
Artillery shells, rockets, bullets... (Score:4, Insightful)
They pretty much all go pretty fast through the atmosphere.
Re:Artillery shells, rockets, bullets... (Score:2)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Informative)
Tank and artillery shells, on the other hand...
Re:Why the Army? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Army is not allowed to operate armed, fixed-wing aircraft. And if you can figure out how to get a helicopter to go hypersonic, then the Airwolf designers want to hire you.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Informative)
It all comes from the WW2 era pissing contest which made the Air Force a separate branch from the Army. It is a pretty silly distinction, to everybody except the Air Force, to whom it is Holy Writ.
And you're right re: the bombs. That was my original (oblique) point. : )
Re:Why the Army? (Score:3, Funny)
Better still, image a Beowulf cluster of said bombs.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, the A-10 is not operated by Army personnel. A big part of the reasoning by the DOD (not the Air Force) for not selling/transferring the A-10 to the Army in the early 90s was the fact that it would have been highly cost prohibative to train the support personnel, and purchase the proper maint. equip. for the birds, and the weapons systems.
The A-10 is an awesome bird - the only one ever built specifically around a gun. The GAU-8/A 30MM Gatling gun is quite effective at turning the enemy into "pink mist and bone chips" but is a pain in the rear to keep maintained and loaded. This is the primary reason that the Air Force, who had trained, qualified personnel and equipment, as well as bases , etc. kept the A-10. Not because of some 50 year old pissing contest (by the way the only pissing contests I can ever remember were AF/Navy or AF with Army/Dept. Navy because the AF still views the Army as more of a sister service.)
The AF provides ground based combat controllers to Army units (the reason you will occasionally see blue suiters with ranger patches etc.) to do ATC for CAS (close air support) with the Army - but the Army doesn't always have one of these ground controllers handy, so they train their people how to communicate with the pilots of the A-10 and v/v - That is why they are involved in the A-10 Training Simulator.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:4, Informative)
A jet can use air as one fuel component, a rocket has to carry all of its combustibles. Anyhow, at these speeds, one doesn't need explosives, the kinetic energy from such a hypersonic jet-missle is enough to cause plenty of damage.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Informative)
As a matter of fact, a lot of Lockheed Martin's next-gen missiles are kinetic kill vehicles: No explosives, just a lot a lot a lot of velocity.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:3, Informative)
This was supposed to be javelen sized and used a delpleted uranium core. I believe the payload was ultimately pencil sized. lets say it was 5mm in diameter and 10cm shaft of uranium moving at Mach 7 well, doing some google math gives me
More accurate math (Score:4, Interesting)
Volume of penetrator =~530cc
Uranium density=19g/cc so the penetrator weighs ~10kg
Kinetic energy = 0.5*10*(1500)^2 =~11MJ
Dynamite is 4.3GJ/ton, so this is 0.0023 ton or 4.6 pounds of dynamite.
11MJ are applied in roughly 5e-4 seconds, so total power is 1.65GW. Cross sectional area is about 7cm^2. Not quite as extreme as you have-the penetrator is a lot heavier but a lot slower.
I've got an older M392A2 spin stabilized sabot round in my office. Heavier than it looks :^)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Funny)
The negotiation went something like this:
Steve Jobs: No way dude! I'll never work with the military! You're harshing my mellow!
Army: We'll tell everyone that Apple is insanely great, and that you personally are a genius.
Steve Jobs: Well that's OK then. Hypersonic missiles are insanely great too!
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's just begging for a rebuttal. Care to cite some statistics on your "2000/XP is more stable than OS X" claim?
Re:Why the Army? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:2)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Interesting)
US Army Space & Missile Command is around the corner after all.
Re:Why the Army? (Score:2)
Re:Why the Army? (Score:5, Informative)
How about some hypersonic sub-orbital artillery [globalsecurity.org] with your fries, Sir? Granted that's the navy version, but whatcha wanna bet that the Army could put a land based platform to good use?
Only $5.8 Million? I Want One (Score:4, Funny)
What, Duke Nukem Forever still isn't out yet? Hey, maybe such a computer could create Duke Nukem Forever from scratch so I could play it.
Re:Only $5.8 Million? I Want One (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Only $5.8 Million? I Want One (Score:4, Funny)
This just might meet the system requirements... (Score:5, Funny)
costs? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't follow the numbers (Score:5, Informative)
The 1655 CPU cluster is expected to deliver 25 Tflops, while the Virginia Tech machine, with 1,100 CPU's (if I remember properly) is rated at 10 Tflops. What else is different? Are they using a different interconnect? Clever programmers to get closer to peak? Or is it something silly like a journalist switching between peak and measured performance, or between computers and CPU's (assuming dual G5 Xserves)? Or is the G5 Xserve really _that_ much faster than the G5 desktop measures VA Tech was benchmarked with? I _like_ that idea...
Not 1100 CPU's (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not 1100 CPU's (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:4, Informative)
VT used non-ECC machines, so safeguards took up some of the processing power.
Current XServes use ECC memory, so that should provide more overall computing power and provide a higher final score.
Different interconnect can also have a greater effect.
And finally, yeah, I reckon that this could be peak results. I remember VT had a peak of aroun 19TFlops? I don't remember the exact details.
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Had you read the article you would have known that thr Army machine is connected using standard gigabit ehternet whereas the Big Mac used Infiniband.
Since this is Slashdot you are par for the course.
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
GigE is about 10x slower (for this type of networking, see http://www.infinicon.com/pdf/LSTCUG-2003-Final.pd
Perhaps they're measuring different applications, and the Army machine doesn't need much communications? Kinda an odd way to benchmark...
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently the 25 TFlops figure is the peak performance, while the expected max performance in linpack will be about 15 TFlops. This sound reasonable compared to bigmac (something like 17 Tflops peak, 10 TFlops max IIRC), considering that this one has 1.5 times as many cpu:s.
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:5, Informative)
And they're also using plain gigabit ethernet for interconnects, not Infiniband, supposedly because the applications they plan to run don't require a lot of I/O bandwidth.
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Now _this_ makes sense. I can easily believe that a different app could have very different performance characteristics, which could explain a 2x performance difference. That won't affect the Top 500 list too much, though, since it's based on standard benchmarks.
In any case, it's
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Both c|net [com.com] and Mac Rumors [macrumors.com] say 15, though, which is as you say much more plausible. Given the degree of confusion, I wouldn't be too sure about other details such as interconnects or price tags... or even number of nodes; perhaps 1566 is an initial confuguration, later growing signifigantly larger to account for the 25TF figure.
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't follow the numbers (Score:4, Funny)
No, not Macs as in Macintosh, I'm talking about MACS (Military Acronym Compression Scheme).
See the military uses acronyms for everything, resulting in a higher throughput to the processors. This will allow them to reach the desired 25Tflops.
Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
Ohhhh. XServe. My bad.
Torn between... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh screw it, that cluster is gonna be awesome! Forget imagining a Beowulf cluster... imagine your frame rate in Doom III!
First.
20fps.
In Doom III.
Evar!
Re:Torn between... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are zero societies on Earth that do not hew to this axiom.
Re:Torn between... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Torn between... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course if you see violence as a solution then I guess thinking might be a bit of a novel concept.
Switzerland and Iceland chose military strength. (Score:5, Insightful)
Switzerland's way is... being better at violence than its neighbors. That's how it stayed neutral in the Second World War - even Hitler was afraid to invade the great mountain fortress.
Iceland's way is... being better at violence than its neighbors. It opted to join the most powerful military alliance in the world.
Re:Torn between... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Torn between... (Score:3, Insightful)
Few large nations are going to invade switzerland. Even should they want to then most of the rest of the world would retaliate. So you do not really have to be better at apllying violence than them. The only time it might is in another world war.
Small nations that may wish to do so need the swiss to keep thier money safe.
Add in the idea that if they are invaded that everyone will fire a shot and go home and you have the best case for s
Re:Torn between... (Score:3, Informative)
I guess about 90% of swiss males hate to do the army-service. You have to do training for 3 weeks every other year (schweizer: keine details.
Anyway, almost every one of them has a Stgw 90 at home, no SIG or whatever you call it. It was developed by the swiss army.
should I say that I am from switzerland? =)
Re:Torn between... (Score:4, Funny)
It's the world's first assault rifle with a built-in corkscrew.
Re:Torn between... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, did you read your own words? If every society applies your axiom, trying to be better at violence than their neighbours... how exactly does the solution to a violent world appear? You would think the world would engage in a global arms race (and eventually a global war, as strategigy give rise to tactics). Is this a solution for a violent world? I honestly think I don't get your point.
Re:Torn between... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure that's not the only solution. What I suspect when I see you type that is that you like the violence.
Slightly misguided Canadian patriotism (Score:5, Informative)
Canada as always beaten the crap out of the US of A ( see your history book ladies of the US ).
"Canada" has been at war with the United States twice - once during the American Revolution and once during the War of 1812. On neither occasion was the United States fighting "Canada", because that nation was not yet founded. It was however fighting the British Army in His Majesty's colonies of Upper and Lower Canada. On both occasions the British Army repelled an American invasion of Canada. On the latter occasion the American army also repelled a British invasion of the western United States from Canada. Your statement is, to say the least, a little simplistic.
Whe have one of the biggest country ( in territory ) with one of the smallest army in number of unit in the world.
Canada is defended by the armed forces and nuclear arsenal of the United States (and, for that matter, the other NATO countries). It is therefore unsurprising that it has a small "army in number of unit".
Whe have the best nuclear reactor and MEDICAL nuclear program in the world but NO NUCLEAR FOR WEAPON program even do whe know how and can build in 30 minutes the best nuke in the world, whe CHOOSED not to.
Setting aside the easy jokes about limited grammatical technology, Canada has not constructed any nuclear weapons because nuclear attacks on Canada would trigger retaliation from the United States. It's not likely that Canada could design and construct a nuclear weapon in "30 minutes the best nuke in the world", but it's certainly clear that any modern industrialized nation could manufacture a nuclear weapon with comparatively little trouble, especially if a substantial nuclear facilities complex is already in place. It's not really obvious what this has to do with being better than anyone else.
Whe have -"NO"- Known enemy.
Well, according to this story reprinted from the National Post, Al-Qaeda has declared that Canada must be destroyed [rabble.ca], because it is part of Dar ul-Harb. I can understand the strong desire to want to pretend that everything's just fine, but it should be pointed out that only one side has to agree in order to have a war.
Defense $$$ (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a grunt in the USMC (former computer geek...who would have figured?)
Anyways... I'm about to go *back* to Iraq in September.
The high brass has some f*ed up priorities some times.... the army has $5.8mil to contract out *research* to some company for technology what.... 10-15 years away at the minimum?
Meanwhile the Marine Corps is scraping nickles and dimes to get us basic equipment the army has had for most of a decade.
Hell, when we go to the field to train, we often have to yell "bang! bang!" because we don't get enough (or any) blank rounds for training.
Imagine if they took just ONE Osprey off the project..... maybe then I wouldn't have a hand-me-down-from-the-army m16a2 (does the army use them anymore?)
Re:Defense $$$ (Score:3, Informative)
$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:5, Insightful)
$5.8 M is absolute peanuts in terms of US Military budgets. You can't even buy replacement engines for a KC-135 (of which there are hundreds in service for various tasks) for $5.8M.
This purchase is segment of a drop in the bucket. It won't even make a dent on the balance sheet. Cutbacks and low funding in other areas is a result of the net picture (stemming from policy and tradition...)
Just be glad they didn't buy $58.0 M worth of Cray X1 or SGI Altix gear.
Re:$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a political playground much larger than I can try to imagine...I'm just asking the simple question of where our priorities are.
Re:$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:5, Informative)
Want to bitch about not having bullets? Look to your own leadership and stop whining about how the Army is going to spend its budget.
Re:$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, no. Government is what keeps society civil. Who has the most to lose if civilization breaks down, the guy living hand-to-mouth, owning little other than the clothes on his back and other depreciating assets, or the guy whose has land, stocks and intellectual property, assets that are worth little to nothing without government's ability to defend his ownership of them? Government might be keeping the poor guy alive but it is keeping the rich guy alive and rich.
Re:$5.8 M is peanuts, maybe even peanut dust (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike the poor people, who, when given a tax break, hide the extra money in mattresses because they don't know what to do with it.
Okay, enough sarcasm.
The difference between a poor family, or even a lower middle-class family, and a rich family is that when the rich family saves $200 on taxes, they buy another big screen TV. When poor or middle-class family saves money on taxes, they buy *groceries*. Bush cut taxes, maybe, but the bottom 50% or so isn't any better off.
Should the top 40% pay 95% of the taxes? The top 30%? The top 20%?
Yes -- you make the money, you pay the taxes on it. Should the top 40% pay 90% of their income above, say, $100,000 in taxes, like they did in the 30's and 40's? Doubtful. Should they pay more than they do now? Definitely.
The top 50% *may* pay 95% of the taxes (doubtful) in terms of the government's total tax intake. The top 50% are not paying anywhere *near* 95%, or even 50%, of their *income*. Remember, the tax system is a bracketed system, so if the tax rate for the lowest bracket gets reduced a couple percent, *everyone*, from Jane Welfare to Bill Gates, pays less in taxes on the income in that bracket. I realize that wealth naturally accretes in the hands of the few -- I'm a realist about economics -- but I don't think we need to help that process along any. Since money naturally trickes *up*, and economic health is determined by the movement of money, why the hell are we giving the tax breaks to the people who would get the money anyway? Keynesian economics requires none of the hand-waving you need to make Reaganomics seem sensible. Giving tax breaks to the rich to "stimulate the economy" is like pouring water into the ocean and waiting for it to flow to the mountains.
How much money do you need to live, anyway? $30,000 a year? $50,000 a year? $100,000 a year? There's a certain point at which you can purchase pretty much every basic thing you could ever need (food, clothes, and shelter) -- above that, it's gravy. You sure as hell better be giving some of it back to help people who aren't able to pull the big bucks in through their jobs. Maybe the rich use less in government services -- that's mostly because they can afford to get theirs elsewhere. The more the poor are able to afford their own medical care and groceries, the less they have to rely on the government for that.
Try living within spitting distance of the poverty line, and *then* tell me that the rich deserve their tax breaks. How many plasma screen TVs and yachts do you need, anyway?
Re:Defense $$$ (Score:2)
Re:Defense $$$ (Score:4, Interesting)
I was active duty USMC from 1992 through 1998 (aptly dubbed "Clinton's Corps"). It's good to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Whether you have a Republican globalist in the White House or a Democrat globalist ruling the roost, the people who need it most still get the short end of the stick when it comes to military spending. In the end, the D.C. suits in charge are all globalists with the common goal of the oligarchy in mind.
We had practically no green money (USMC money) for things like training and education, but blue money (US Navy money for the aviation side of the house) seemed to come out of the friggin woodwork. I couldn't get a new three ring binder without filling out two forms (in triplicate!) and a two week wait for the purchase to be approved, but one avionics jockey with a few too many beers in him from the night before drops a $45K helicopter battery on the tarmac and POOF!! a new battery practically materializes out of nowhere with no paperwork and no questions asked.
The Marines are well known for doing the best job with the worst equipment and no preparation. Keep up the good work, and watch your ass in Iraq.
Semper Fi!
Another misspell (Score:5, Funny)
That'll be a damn pretty thermodynamic simulator (Score:5, Funny)
"Uh, we'd advise against that sir." - Army colonel
"But he SAID I could lick them! Ooh, red, yellow and green WMD icons!" - G. W. Bush
That's about 9 terahertz (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's about 9 terahertz (Score:2)
Think different? (Score:5, Funny)
-psy
Is this the same thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Translation:
form factor... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know there aren't available for mac, but I seem to remember Opterons and Xeon blades were the hot topic some month ago, with dual opteron blades and all...
any reason not to use them blades to build a cluster, each blade bay connected to all other, creating a (sic) beowulf or mosix cluster of some sort ?
Re:form factor... (Score:5, Interesting)
As to the comment about no 'mac' blades, it is true, but if you are a big fan of power architecture, IBM has announced JS-20, a power based blade, which has the 970 (same as G5), but only at 1.6 GHz (ironically enough, IBM doesn't seem to sell anything at the clock speeds Apple gets to sell at, and they are all IBM's chips...).
The cost of blade solutions with myrinet or infiniband solutions is significant. Otherwise, most chassis' I see communicate externally through an oversubscribed ethernet switch. Ethernet is inherently sub-optimal, but oversubscribed ethernet is particularly troublesome for some of the fine-grained parallel applications (embarrasingly parrallel applications, of course, don't care, and rendering is one such application).
Add to this a lack of expansion capability (i.e. IBM blades can take one daughterboard, so there is not any possibility of, say, having a fibre channel *and* myrinet adapter in a blade server.
The only thing I'm aware of with respect to high-performance interconnect solution for blade servers available today is to get IBM blades with Myrinet daughter boards and an optical passthrough module. Ultimately, it can really reduce cabling for things like ethernet, kvm, etc etc, but those myrinet cables are still going to be a tad unwieldy (80+ wires to the cabinet, even if they are fiber cables).
I actually want to see a solution that would aggregate, say, 1X infiniband to each blade into 4 4X connectors, no oversubscription and much sturdier and fewer cables.
3132 processors (Score:5, Funny)
I sure as hell hope Steve Jobs threw in an iPod and a BMW to go with it.
Netcraft Confirms... (Score:5, Funny)
...that the Army is buying.
1556 ???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1556 ???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1556 ???? (Score:5, Interesting)
1556 = 1024 + 512 + 20 hot spares.
the age of skynet may be nigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Cozzano (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm probably a moron, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
At what point does linking together a bunch of off-the-shelf fully-self-contained PCs become a supercomputer? If doing so is the case, wouldn't it be a heck of a lot cheaper to link together whitebox machines, much as datacenters (the type that rent servers) tend to use whitebox servers rather than rackmount boxes?
I just feel like the term "supercomputer" is being sullied by so-called supercomputers that are nothing more than a simple cluster. Of course, I'm probably a moron, as I said earlier.
Re:I'm probably a moron, but... (Score:3, Informative)
these divisions are quite arbitrary, of course.
c http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/multipr o cessing
white boxes aren't any cheaper - they take up expensive server room space. and with the current technology white boxes require dramatically more complicated cabling and hence their setup is more expensive (labor intesive), maintenance as well.
What ever happened to.... (Score:3, Funny)
Apple the new Sun? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying they are direct competitors, but they are competitors in at least some respects. And it seems that Apple is profiting from sales of its products whereas Sun's biggest revenue inflow recently has been its $1b settlement with Microsoft, not from its product lines.
I don't know, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a feeling that as more time goes on, more and more Apple-based clusters will use OS X. Apple continues to optimize the OS. They also continue to add remote administration features (both GUI and command line) while at the same time keeping the BSD-ness of OS X as pure as possible. (OS X is based on NeXTstep and OPENSTEP, so it does have some oddities when compared to "pure" 4.4BSD or Free/Open/Net BSD).
There are also some Apple software cluster technologies (such as Xgrid) but I'm not sure if they're hardcore enough for something of this magnitude. Apple has mainly been aiming their cluster software and marketing towards the small-scale (10 to 100 notes) research groups.
Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Informative)
check this InfoWorld comparison of Opteron systems with the XserveG5,
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/06/18/25FE6
Re:I wonder.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:True purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
As the military continues to become more high-tech it takes a greater and greater level of techinical skills to operate, especially at command centers. At some point it is going to become difficult to recuit those people (simply put, if 15% of the population has - or is capable of - the technical skills and the military needs 50% of it's troop to have them they must come from someplace).
I do not think it is in the next few years. But since sometime in the 90's (can't really specify a single point in time) it has been a possibility. Any large theater we may have to get invovled in may require this.
Though this has little to do with the current Iraq war and more to do with the shift the military has been taking.
But yes, as to what the vast majority of people refer to the "upcoming draft", it is what a few democrats have discussed as a talking point and a protest against the war. Others have picked up on it and it has changed to "Bush wants a draft". The military still turns down a certain percentage of the volunteers it recieves as they consider themselfs over staffed - especially in the realm of grunts as they need educated technical skills (and grunts are what armchair or retired generals are moaning about not having enough of). There will be no general draft until that is no longer true.
Re:Better then real life testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how do they get so many flops? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how do they get so many flops? (Score:5, Informative)
It's the fact that the G5 can dispatch two floating point operations per cycle (like the Athlon's fpu) and that it has a fused multiply/add instruction that can be done in 1 cycle. This effectively gives it the ability to do 4 flops/cycle.
So the theoretical peak is given by 1566 xserves * 2 cpus each * 2 GHz * 4 flops/cycle = 25.056 teraflops/s