SiCortex intros SC072 Catapult -- 72 processor cluster for $15000

Off hand, we can't think of how we'd truly utilize the horsepower generated by a 72-processor cluster shoved into a "whisper-quiet, low-power deskside cabinet," but we'd happily draw up a plan if forced. SiCortex -- the same folks who delivered the bicycle-powered supercomputer -- has introduced its new SO072 Catapult, which features a standard Linux environment, 48GB of RAM and a trio of (optional) PCIExpress slots. This aptly categorized high performance computer (HPC) sucks down less than 200-watts of power, sports a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports and has room for six internal hard drives. Reportedly, each of the 12 SC072 nodes is a multi-core chip with six CPU cores, and while $15,000 may seem steep for your average tower, we'd say this is a pretty good value considering the hardware.

[Via Gadgetopia]

[moondy @ Nov 17th 2007 5:51AM]

Its Linux, so im afraid it wont run Crysis

[andi @ Nov 17th 2007 8:27AM]

ever heart of Cedega?... I think it will run it faster than Windows. I'm using Cedega in Ubuntu on a pretty low-end PC, and it still runs my fav games (Warcraft3, Oblivion) faster than windows. Think again :)

[sarpulas @ Nov 17th 2007 8:43AM]

@andi

cedega/wine generally do not support the newest games, and still I can't run my copy of Europa Universalis III o Linux, so I wouldn't bet on crysis running on it...

[An o\\\' Neamus @ Nov 17th 2007 9:01AM]

This is not x86 compatible. So it won't run Cedega/Wine. You could run DOSBox on one CPU and get the equivalent of (probably) a '486. So it could run DOS Doom, but definitely not any Windows era games...

[Leopard Nimrod @ Nov 17th 2007 10:52AM]

This is not a gaming machine!

This is not for impressing your gaming buddies!

This is not to stroke your ego while living in your parent's basement!

[captain underpants and the bringdown gang @ Nov 17th 2007 6:59PM]

the 1990s called they also want their meme back. (to the person above me)

[Austin @ Nov 17th 2007 6:25AM]

How did they manage to make this run on such a low wattage? Amazing work from these guys.

[AnONeamus @ Nov 17th 2007 8:03AM]

Meh, not so special... AMD Stream processor gives 500GFlops for 150Watts, or 3.3GFlops/Watt. This is 0.36 GFlops/Watt, or in other words 10x less efficient...

[Stace @ Nov 17th 2007 10:55AM]

We've got the first production SC5832 in our machine room -- it's impressive how low wattage (and low cooling) this thing is. 5.8TF on a single 3 phase 60 amp circuit, with no special cooling.

Press release here: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/news/detail.php?id=67 installation pics and vids here: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~stace/sicortexpics

[Foxamerica @ Nov 17th 2007 6:26AM]

Yes, but can it run doom?

[andi @ Nov 17th 2007 8:29AM]

sure

[Andrew H. @ Nov 18th 2007 10:53PM]

2004 called. they want their meme back.

[trankzen @ Nov 19th 2007 4:47PM]

Last week called. They want their "want their meme back" meme back

[mr.me! @ Nov 17th 2007 6:45AM]

Looks like its running Win XP and Firefox...

[andi @ Nov 17th 2007 8:28AM]

where are the XP characteristics?.. I'm using firefox, but in Ubuntu..

[Charlie Calhoun @ Nov 20th 2007 2:11AM]

maybe its the big blue window title color, or perhaps the bright red X (close) button?

[silverblackvoid @ Nov 17th 2007 6:46AM]

just what i need for this christmas!

[Ameen @ Nov 17th 2007 7:00AM]

But does it play Doom!

[KingDeb8r @ Nov 17th 2007 7:02AM]

WOW! My order has just been placed! Now offers for leasing the power from me on a post card please!

Kidding! But I think you could render a 3d picture or two!

[AnONeamus @ Nov 17th 2007 7:38AM]

Meh... Lot's of processors doesn't necessarily make a fast machine. This machine has 72 processor cores each rated at 1Gigaflop. So 72 Gigaflops right? Compare this to the recently announced AMD Stream processor (500GFlops) or the PS3 (218GFlops CPU/1800GFlops GPU)... All of which are a lot cheaper. The PS3 holds the record for the most FLOPS/buck at the moment (apparently at $0.20/GFlop). This is not very much bang for buck at $208/GFlop. The fastest current PC processor (Intel QX6800) is at 37GFlops. You could build an 8 core 75GFlop PC for around $4000, which of course could play Doom too.

[AnONeamus @ Nov 17th 2007 8:52AM]

If you're running Linux on the PS3, you'll only get the CPU's GFlops, so 218GFlops for 400USD (or $1.83/GFlop). If you were going to be doing any serious number crunching, you'd be *much* better off using PS3s (apparently they play games too).

Or put another way, $15000 would buy you 8TFlops of PS3 power (37 PS3s) , or in other words a setup 110x more powerful than this! That would also put you at about 255 on the Top 500 supercomputer list.

The top place of the 500 is 360GFlops (BlueGene), which could be yours for $666,000 if you made it out of 1665 PS3s...

[ReverendGadgetBoy @ Nov 17th 2007 2:45PM]

Wow. $666,000? PS3 R TEH DEVIL!!

sorry. couldnt resist.

[Erik @ Nov 17th 2007 7:22AM]

Will it blend?

[Kurt MacD @ Nov 17th 2007 10:20AM]

For F*** sakes man it's a desktop computer! How the hell are ya gonna fit it into a blender in the first place..no no...I think your hands would fit in there quite nicely.

[Zeus the God @ Nov 17th 2007 1:55PM]

I would think a scrap metal grinder would do. :D

[Charlie Calhoun @ Nov 20th 2007 2:15AM]

Will it Scrap Metal Grind?

[Tim @ Nov 17th 2007 7:38AM]

Its not the prettiest of things xD. Wonder how fast it could boot XP. Infact windows vista only supports up to 16gb?

[quomen @ Nov 17th 2007 7:45AM]

But will it play dead??

[Neurofool @ Nov 17th 2007 7:51AM]

Would you run a grid engine on it?
If so - seems like 0.5GB of ram per processor is a little light. . .

[An o' Neamus @ Nov 17th 2007 9:00AM]

This is not x86 compatible. So it won't run Cedega/Wine. You could run DOSBox on one CPU and get the equivalent of (probably) a '486. So it could run DOS Doom, but definitely not any Windows era games...

[An o Neamus @ Nov 17th 2007 9:28AM]

Last post, promise... :)

To put this all into perspective. A mid-range PC gaming machine (2.4Ghz dualcore + nVida 8800GT) would cost you under $1000, give you 400-500GFlops (5-6x faster than this box), be able to run Doom, Crysis, Windows Vista and Linux. So why is this exciting?

[Deuz Augustine @ Nov 17th 2007 9:53AM]

Because it has 72 processors. Duh. That means it's like, 72 times faster, right?

(I'm kidding, and I read your posts.)

[kev @ Nov 17th 2007 9:55AM]

Because it's not faster than this box. Have you tried programming on a REAL corporate development environment before? It's lovely...things that would take minutes on your gaming system run in seconds on these babies.

[silverblackvoid @ Nov 17th 2007 9:56AM]

you don't know what you're talkin about.

[kev @ Nov 17th 2007 9:59AM]

On top of that, it's running on MIPS arch, which is just asking for low-level or hardware-level programming.

[kev @ Nov 17th 2007 9:52AM]

This is CLEARLY not for the normal or even 'savvy' consumer. Look at the suite of tools you get as part of the purchase. The languages it has compilers include FORTRAN '77, '90, and '95. This looks far more oriented for a business development environment.

[kev @ Nov 17th 2007 10:03AM]

Not just financial programming, but engineering as well:

http://www.sicortex.com/products/sc072/datasheet

RTFM. Most of you trolls on engadget don't know what a Fourier transform is, nor have the mental capacity to do one manually, so I'm not expecting much.

[Fubar @ Nov 17th 2007 11:48AM]

Wow. I know I'm out of it, but I didn't know you could still get Fortran compilers.

I guess the target customers pretty much know who they are; for the rest of us, the identifying mark is a dog-eared copy of Numerical Recipes in Fortran.

[dan @ Nov 17th 2007 11:58PM]

@kev:

You're just angry cause all that hard work and education will never make up for not getting a date for the senior prom.

I think it's time to let go, don't you?

[An o Neamus @ Nov 18th 2007 12:13PM]

Can somebody who is willing to demonstrate their superior knowledge instead of merely claiming it please explain why this is more powerful than systems which have higher GFlop ratings?

Is it parallelism? If so, what is the difference between 72 parallel processors (in this system) and 112 parallel processors in a GPU (nVidia)?

Is it the ability to program it in assembler? Is it the availability of a Fortran compiler? Something else?

If the PS3 is not able to be used as a powerful node in a super-computing cluster, then why are the "Top 500" site (amongst many others) saying that you can and that it's a good choice?

[id @ Dec 20th 2007 11:28PM]

@An o Neamus:

The Cell processor's eight (or seven on the PS3) SPUs only have 256KB of RAM each, and especially on the PS3 incarnation, a horribly narrow communications bottleneck. Low memory means swapping data in & out a LOT, and that movement happens too slowly.

Sony initially intended all PS3 graphics to be rendered on the Cell, but the actual available bandwidth is so low that they simply can't push the textures and framebuffers through at any reasonable speed for games, even though the SPUs would technically be fast enough to do the rendering. So they tacked on an off-the-shelf GPU that wasn't too expensive (i.e. not top-notch performance), but works.

High performance computing is all about moving tons of data between nodes, and crunching a ton of data per node. The PS3 is applicable if you can stream your calculations through without having to store much per node, and if the bandwidth is sufficient, but it's a joke compared to systems like the SiCortex and other HPCs.

In short, a CPU's GFLOPS don't mean anything if it can't fetch data and output results quickly. You end up with a really fast, mostly idle CPU, waiting for the comms to free up so it can squeeze some bytes through.

[Oblig @ Nov 17th 2007 9:55AM]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things.

[Scott @ Nov 17th 2007 1:54PM]

I am Beowulf!

[dhughes @ Nov 18th 2007 12:50AM]

It is a cluster "a 72-processor cluster".

[Daniel @ Nov 18th 2007 9:41PM]

You mean a grid (because he's already a cluster).

[An o Neamus @ Nov 17th 2007 10:20AM]

Best thing about promises? They're meant to be broken. ;)

Baffle them with Science?

The AMD Stream processor (500GFlops - 2000USD) is supposed to be used for scientific computation. It is aimed at "customers in the oil and gas, financial and engineering analysis industries".

About the nVidia GPUs (aka. Gaming cards): "NVIDIA® CUDA™ C-compiler and software development kit (SDK) has been recognized as one of the Top 100 innovations of the year, winning the coveted "Best of What's New" award. CUDA was selected for its ability to transform a graphics processing unit (GPU) into a supercomputer and to deliver the level of performance normally found in large and expensive clusters residing in datacenters to the desktop of scientists and engineers around the world."

Also, from the "Top 500" website: "The Sony PlayStation 3 has a number of unique features that make it particularly suited for scientific computation.Its incredibly low cost makes it very attractive as a scientific computing node, that is part of a cluster. In fact, its highly plausible that the raw computing power per dollar that the PS3 offers, is significantly higher than anything else on the market today!"

The world is changing.

[An o Neamus @ Nov 17th 2007 10:34AM]

Those interested in the PS3 as a supercomputer:

"But while the console flounders in the commercial space, the PS3 may be finding a new calling in the realm of science and research.

Right now, a cluster of eight interlinked PS3s is busy solving a celestial mystery involving gravitational waves and what happens when a super-massive black hole, about a million times the mass of our own sun, swallows up a star."

From: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer

[John @ Nov 17th 2007 12:11PM]

well, yes, but quite possibly in the same way that a brain trust of 8 hobos is busy solving world hunger.

[jonb @ Nov 18th 2007 12:06PM]

wtf? what kind of linux needs all that???

well, at least there's FINALLY a machine that could possibly run vista, and actually do it, well, good.

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Nov 17th 2007 12:17PM]

"With integrated microwaves!"