Earth Simulator, G5 Cluster Drop In 'Top 500' List 343
daveschroeder writes "The November Top 500 supercomputer list has been published at SC2004. Topping the charts is IBM and the US Department of Energy's 'BlueGene/L DD2' beta system, at 70.72 TFlops, followed by NASA's 'Columbia' at 51.87.TFlops. For the first time in several publications of this list, Japan's Earth Simulator is no longer in the number one slot, falling to third. Virginia Tech's 'System X' Xserve G5 cluster, while 20% faster than the original cluster that debuted at number 3 last November, has fallen to number 7 due to the new entries, but remains the fastest supercomputer at an academic institution. Here's an excellent cost comparison (Google cache) of the top machines ('System X' is significantly cheaper than anything else in the top 20, not to mention cheaper than many things far below it in performance)."
super computations? (Score:4, Interesting)
Erm ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can assume it was put to some sort of use. But I honestly get the feeling it was more to have fun, and look cool (which means more bling bling from sponsors, alumni, etc)
Sunny Dubey
cluster operating system (Score:2, Interesting)
Only with Mac OS X can you get the combination of commercial software (such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop), user friendliness, no known viruses, best available security, and stability/scalability suitable for world-class superclusters.
Re:Pizza arguments (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:EARTH TO MAC ZEALOTS: (Score:3, Interesting)
power costs? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is with the Apple fan-boyism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now Apple markets good computers. Tend to be on the expensive side, but they are usually high quality.
The Power970 is decent enough in itself. The opteron is more powerfull, but is also much more energy hungry. The Intel Itanium is nice but it's very expensive. etc etc
But what is this worship of Apple? It makes no sense.
Story 1: Earth simulator.. blah blah blah., but Mac cluster!
Story 2: SGI supercluster.... blah blahblah, But Mac cluster!
Story 3: Blue Gene cluster, 65000+ cpus... blah blah blah, but Mac cluster!
Realy? Who gives a fvck about the 7th place computer, and who gives a damn about cost analysis at this point? What about the Top5?
Did you know that Blue Gene is PowerPC?
Did you know that Linux now runs the majority of top super computers...
Did you know that Blue Gene proccessors only run a 700mhz??!!!
Did you know that #4 is 3564 Power970's running at 2.2 ghz? And that beats out 4000+ Intanium2's running at 1.7ghz?
This is a Geek site.. what about OSes?
By ranking:
1. Linux, 2. Linux, 3. Unix, 4. Linux, 5. Linux, 6. Unix, 7. OS X, 8. Linux, 9. Unix, 10. Linux (most powerfull x86 btw), 11. Unix, 12. Unix, 13. Linux, 14. ?, 15. Linux, 16. Linux, 17. Linux, 18. Linux, 19. Linux, 20. Unix.
Were is the most powerfull Windows computer? Well there is one cluster that is probably still on the top500. I dare you to find it, though. It's probably around #200 or #300, which is stil freaking fast.
Ok, So the big Mac is still #7. That's great, but there are 6 wonderfull computers that have all sorts of great technology that your completely ignoring because Apple wets your pants.
Did you know that Blue Gene will eventually have over 65,000 proccessors??
Only on Slashdot (Score:0, Interesting)
Can we please restrict the Apple ads to the banner? Thank you.
Re:VA Tech Supercomputer (Score:2, Interesting)
it was housed in the CRC about 1 mile off campus in those days. Probably freed up the room for the cluster when they decomissioned the old 3090 behemoth.
Re:Power architecture does well (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because x86 is a horrible architecture. On top of that, x86 instructions are translated into microcode before they're executed, so you end up with an unknown (maybe you could ask the folks at Intergraph about it) architecture emulating a crappy architecture in hardware. Better architectures exist (ARM, MIPS, POWER, 68000, PA-RISC, toy architectures used in introductory computer architecture classes, everything else), but Intel won out in the marketplace. You can still get better chips, but you pay more and have less support.
That's why you'd be better off investing in AMD over Intel. AMD hit upon what Intel should've done years ago. The x86-64, for those who don't know, supports x86 binaries as well as its own new architecture. Think of it like an x86 chip with the underlying hardware exposed. If Intel had exposed the hardware that x86 instructions get translated to, they'd have had a clear upgrade path instead of having to dork off x86 out of the blue. AMD embraced and extended x86, and marginalized its future without doing any actual damage to it or x86 users. It's flat out genius.
In the meantime, almost anything performs better than x86, and with less power consumption. It makes those mini-ITX boards look like jokes, because instead of engineering a low powered MIPS board/processor, the VIA folks did another x86. It may have been good from a business point, but it's horrible from an engineering standpoint, and that sums up Intel and x86 fairly nicely.
Re:Pizza arguments (Score:3, Interesting)
-Dan
Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple has created software development packages specifically designed for their G5's with optimized code for the 64bit architecture such as complex math functions.
So not only is Apple providing a cheaper and power efficient system for academic institutes, they make it easier for professors and assistants to create the software to run on those clusters.
Not to mention that BG beats BigMac in flops/$ (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently IBM announced their commercial prices for BG machines (see e.g. theregister.co.uk or news.com.com). Prices start at $1.5 million (1 fully equipped cabinet). Using this price and published linpack figures one arrives at about 2.9 Mflop/s/$, compared to the maximum value of 2.2 Mflop/s/$ he quotes for the best apple system.
Add in the fact that the BG uses much less space and power than a comparable xserve cluster, that it has a faster and lower latency network, and we have a winner.
Re:need? (Score:4, Interesting)
uh-huh. If G5 runs so cool, then surely they could have kept the original cooling-system for the 2.5GHz model, instead of going for an complicated liquid-cooling system? Really, why did they move from heatsink/fan to liquid-cooling? AFAIK the original G5's were already quiet. And looking at reviews such as this seems to suggest that the G5 does indeed run very hot. [computerworld.com]
And looking here and [arstechnica.com] here [amd.com] I can see this:
2.5GHz G5: 75-85C during load
2.2GHz Opteron: 48C during load
G5 runs cooler? Hardly.
Re:Pizza arguments (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? Very few of all the possible faults in a computer have any kind of temperature change associated with them. When a memory stick, a HD, a CPU, a system chip, a connector fails, you don't get any overheating. (You may get a slight temp decrease after the component has failed and stopped consuming power.)
Your scenario only applies to failing fans and heatsinks prying themselves loose... not very common occurrences.
Sorry, but you have bought into some not very tech-savvy information somewhere.
BTW, it has been establisehd in every discussion here and in specialised hardwarwe sites that the power draw of a 2 GHz G5 is on par with a 2 GHz K8. This comparison is made harder by IBM not readily giving out the max power but a "typical" power, but valid estimations have been achieved nevertheless.
There is a reason why the 2.5 GHz G5 couldn't be air-cooled quietly. (It could have been air-cooled, but not quietly. I have a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64 system that is whisper quiet with a Zalman CNPS7000-AlCU at 1300 rpm and two 120mm case fans at 1600 rpm. Go figure.)
IBM is a fabulous foundry, but so has AMD been recently (avoiding most of Intel's 90 nm problems, for instance). The 970FX is just a really good processor based on a damn good architecture, not an engineering miracle.
Re:funny or funny? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pizza arguments (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a question. Can you point us to any scientific work actually performed on System X? I haven't been able to find anything concrete, and I know for a fact that for some time there can't have been any science done after the first round of benchmarks, since they quite literally took the whole thing apart and replaced it with completely different machines. This doesn't sound like the sort of thing anyone who cares about "cost of ownership" would do.
I love the "and now" it's being used for real scientific work. A full year after it was installed. What the hell took them so long? Can't have been because it was a first of a kind machine - so is the current #2, Columbia. The Altix 3000 BX line was announced only last week, and the new Itanium 2/9M CPUs that power it were formally launched by Intel earlier today.
Re:Not to mention that BG beats BigMac in flops/$ (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, now I get to be flamed by a bunch of mac haters who think pointing out a factual error in your statement means I don't know anything else about clustering and will blindly chose a mac above all others.... *sigh*
Are prices on that comparison adjusted for date? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Pizza arguments (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like the IBM xSeries servers I'm deploying right now. Our servers automatically order replacement components if/when components fail. This includes CPUs, memory, fans, hard drives.. just about anything. IBM big boxes have been doing this for decades, and distributed systems for a number of years now. Don't get too excited.
Re:Why does slashdot keep posting these stories? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll trade a SGI for 2 crays.