Researchers create supercomputer with four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 29th 2008 4:48PM
posted May 29th 2008 4:48PM
It's far from the first supercomputer created with the help of some gaming hardware, but this rig built by a group of researchers from the University of Antwerp is certainly impressive enough in its own right, with it employing four of NVIDIA's high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards (which combined pack eight GPUs) to help develop new computational methods for tomography. Dubbed the FASTRA, the system also packs an AMD Phenom 9850 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 750GB hard drive, all of which is powered by a 1,500W power supply (and tastefully lit up with some blue LEDs). That apparently lets 'em do calculations that previously took an hour in just a few seconds, not to mention finally get a decent frame rate in Crysis. Be sure to check out the video after the break for a thorough (and more entertaining than it should be) overview of the system.
"...an AMD Phenom 9850 processor..."
lol
Muppet. Did you stop to think that the mainboard might not just support an Intel CPU?
Besides with that power, what does it matter anyway?
someone obviously doesn't know why they used an AMD proc
My thoughts exactly Pochi :D
What a failtastic CPU for an otherwise awesome machine....
Those two 9800GX2s in the middle will melt at full load also......
@maty
Did you stop to think that it should have?
@mike
Someone obviously doesn't!
Pochi, they don't need the best processor in the world. The GPU's are doing all the work anyway.
I did.
But then again, I'm not the mainboard manufacturer. And neither are you.
So quit yo jibba jabber, crazy foo'!
Pochi, they don't need the best processor in the world. The GPU's are doing all the work anyway.
...YOU DID WHAT WITH OUR GRANT MONEY!!???!!...but it plays crysis!
Surely they need memory bandwidth with all those GX2's so i assume they are using AMD's still superior bandwidth, even if the rest of their chip sucks, they on die controller was a brilliant idea.
I'm pretty sure that intel doesn't have an off-the-shelf motherboard with four PCIe-2.0 slots spread out like this so that rules out every intel processor. If the 9800gx2s are doing the work, you could probably run an Semprom and still get the same speed for this kind of work.
@maty
lol, fair enough. Maybe we SHOULD be...
Maybe if you watch the other videos, they may explain why it is that way.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FastraGPUSuperPC
That's my processor right there. It's pretty decent, but in my particular setup, need some graphics enhancements. This will do nicely, for when I make $75,000 a year.
BUT, and I know you all don't wanna hear this...
CAN IT RUN CRYSIS????
It should be able to, but we need a benchmark done to know for sure.
Hey Mister loves the caps lock.
What did I tell you about posting?
DO IT MAN.
that's very cool but the guy is the prototype of the nerd!
You mean stereotype..?
I believe nerds existed long before this one.
I think you mean 'posterchild' not prototype...
What?
Well it's a good thing he said it could play Crysis or else we'd get comments asking if it could.
And no,it will not blend either......but it could prob make a simulation about said pc blending in about 5 seconds...
We need a biiger blender.....
funny thing... my pc is a little over average and it can run Crysis... It's not that hard to run. So why don't we just kill the jokes...
Simulation about blending? That makes no sense. meta?
OOH! Big Buck Bunny goes online tomorrow!
Nothing so far can play it on Very High at a decent resolution with 16xQ CSAA.
Mine can barely (25-30FPS) play it on High with 4x AA at 1680x1050...
I believe the first three commenters posted on the wrong message. Nice job guys lol
No, try replying to the message above this one. Since they're both at the same time (5:00PM) it seems to put them on the second message. If you click on the date of the message above you can see all the comments correctly placed, but the comment system sucks.
where is the motherboard?
Underneath all the graphics cards obviously.
The silver block above the cards (black block) appears to be the CPU heatsink.
its probably an msi 790FX AMD board
# AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
# 4x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
# 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
# MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
# Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
# ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
# Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
# Windows XP 64-bit
badass!
It's not easy being green...
Most excellent !!
The guy was articulate and, for a non-native English-speaker, spoke English very well.
Grooming: don't care
Overall grade: A+
It ain't easy being white.
It ain't easy being brown.
All this pressure to be bright.
I got children all over town.
wow no love for the arrested development quotes? pffffft!
Well actually I would think it uses a lot less power in several ways...
he said it performed on par with a 512 node cluster of computers . So using one computer instead of that would probably save some power. Plus if it computes faster than that it'll be able to do more work again saving power.
he gives nerd a bad name, in terms of looks.
No joke - he epitomizes the stereotypical nerd if anything...
gotta love the accent!
Yeah, but the hand gestures were getting pretty annoying.
He looks and sounds just like Professor Fink from the Simpsons.
He's like a cross between Thunderbirds Brains, and Kermit T. Frog...
They should market this to the gaming industry.
Character modelers, BEWARE!
The lengths people will go to in order to get someone else to pay for their gaming rig.
Tomography my a$$.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go convince my boss I need one of these for uh.. video editing or something.
Is it strange that I'm tempted to worship it as though it were a god?
Bet that thing could play a mean game of chess, too...
But can it play Castle Wolfenstein??
@whatishalo
yes im sure it can. and before you ask, it can prob play any game you throw at it. with 4 graphics cards, it better be able to. a better question would be what game cant this do?
with 8 gpus they could prob do some good crypto work too
You know, it doesn't matter how fast the computer is when encrypting something, when it comes to DE-crypting something a quantum computer could do it in a few minutes
@ Captain underpants
No proper quantum computer is in existence as yet therefore what you say is meaningless, viva la fastra.
better for math than intel. if they had the board they would have picked a ppc but I don't know of an nvidia/ppc sli combination. The real question is why no-one has made a dual am2+ socket board with quad card sli capability yet.
Its a schooper komputor!!!
Is not!!! With that hardware configuration, it's a toaster oven that happens to be able to do calculations.
This post is going to be pure comedy in a few years.
"Fastest EVAR! LOLZ"
Because there isn't a motherboard that is intel based AND has 4 PCI-E 2.0 ports?
Do some researching before posting dumb fanboy comments.
There are plenty of Intel motherboards with 4 PCI Express slots, but the spacing of the last two slots would limit you to ONLY 3 9800GX2s
Yes, there actually is. SkullTrail; Duh.
And Dean is completely correct; unless this is using Cuda; it actually only uses four of the GPUs (Two of the cards.) instead of all four cards, and eight GPUs.
And even if this is using Cuda; It's very possible that it is still only using two of the cards. However, I can't be sure.
I stand corrected, they just aren't sold on newegg.
The cost for one is like 700$
Perhaps they figured a 700 dollar price difference wasn't worth it since the GPU is doing the work anyway.
intel skulltrail?
why dont you do some research....
Too bad you can't run four 9800GX2s in SLI....
Im a bit confused, hes running 4 x2 gpus codependent yet not sli? They are working together somehow... how would a modern game recognize this?
Would it assume one super processor and a gpu or what?
That video is BEYOND awesome!
as far as gaming is concerned, this will not perform any better than 2 GX2s in sli since octo-sli is not supported...
wasn't folding at home working on getting folding to work on nvidia hardware?
actually this system wont perform any better than a system with a single 9800GX2 for gaming as the motherboard supports CrossFire and not SLI.
wow, v cool
makes my computer look like a toaster
lol
Don't forget. If you put slices of bread between the GPU's, it WOULD toast it. They might be nerds, and neatfreaks, but someone teach them a lesson on melted silicon...
Impressive!! Fast, Efficient and Cheap.
like a good prostitute
You call 4000 euros cheap?
Compared to a similar performing $3.5 million computing cluster, yes, 4,000 euro is very cheap.
Damn, that thing can process on par with 300 core2 duo 2.4Ghz desktops in a cluster. Im suprised they didn't nickname it Skynet or something like that.....
It depends heavily on workload.
Apparently the rig has 8*128 = 1024 shader processors and the 1024 processors are connected by "fast enough" local bus. That's easily beats all the proprietary interconnects.
But again - it all depends on workload. This is not a supercomputer per se. General HPC workloads need sh*tload of RAM - terabytes - and the guys are running easily on "measly" 8GB. (If we presume that 30 seconds are bottlenecked by hard drive speed, then 30 seconds * 50MB/s = 1500MBs = 1.5GB of raw data to process. That's really nothing.)
If the rig proves anything, then it is that in few years games probably will not need CPUs anymore.
Will it play doom?
taken from the original article
'The main reason why they configured an AMD system is because they couldn't find a motherboard for the Intel platform that could fit four GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards. '
I'll bet the noise that thing makes is obscene.
I love the way the mobo is almost hidden.
obviously they thought it through before building it. i don't see why you guys are picking at the setup? i guess someone's jealous that their system isn't nearly as good.
I don't care what these scientists what the FASTRA for, I just want to play Crysis in it. I need to do a "project" like this in my school, for science.
I don't know much about nVidia or visual calculations(?), but isn't nVidia's QUADRO better at this than the GeForce series?
Or is the QUADRO so expensive that it's cheaper to do it this way?
Its using CUDA, all the Nvidia GPUs work the same. Besides usually the Quatro cards are based on the same silicon as the Geforce branded chips.
I'm proud of my fellow Belgians ! Atlast a serious tech article on Engadget from Belgium !!
hahaha love that guys accent
Dear Santa,
You delivered my PC to the wrong address!!!
It'd probably be even faster if they had the specs and/or open drivers for the cards.
There's NO competition with closed drivers! They have nothing to lose but their reputation as the cause of most (windows) computer crashes.
Wooow, a PLAYMOBIL!
Nice job, glad to see something postive on internet
Lol @ Playmobile figure
I wonder how fast this will render a BSOD? lol I kid :D
"Uh, yeah, boss? I need a FASTRA for my uh...complicated spreadsheets."
the question is not wether or not it can play doom... but will it blend?
I don't know if you're one of the retards referring to actual blenders, so I'm just going to blow off that possibility and assume you're asking a really good question-- and I can't wait to see how fast this can render. It should be absolutely insane. That said, blender's rendering module may require extensive modification to take advantage of GPU's instead of CPU's.. but it's already multi threaded, so theoretically it shouldn't be /that/ hard to make something at least work. I just don't know if it would be best for them to build the renderer on top of gallium or not.. brook perhaps? Is CUDA compatible with the GPL?
the question is why are you using such lame "jokes"
Those aren't Belgians.. They are DUTCH! People from Antwerp have a very different (beter) English accent ;) Topography is a big thing, I am a student medical sciences and it's used in a lot of research for your health.. It makes 3D structures of tissue so you can examine a biopsy (example a hepatitic liver) and without having to handle it true all the processes for microscopy, you just put it fresh into the micro CT and you have your images without artifacts! This beats Crysis in a lot of ways ;) Hope to see it in my hospital really soon! Greetings from Belgium and good night!
i'd be worried to be in your hospital if you're using topography to diagnose a hepatitic liver! presumably you mean tomography . . . . or is it a special hospital for people who are extremely large and need to be measured on a map?
How did they do this? First of all the motherboard is crossfire, and as far as I know Nvidia licenses SLI out to only certain boards, which are modified during the manufacturing process to allow this, so did they actually solder new parts onto the motherboard or what?
Also 8 GPU's? Number one the 9800GX2 only supports SLI with one other card, the connectors do not allow for quad SLI between GX2's. 2 There seem to be no visible SLI connectors on the cards, so how are they making them work together? Number 3, Nvidia's own drivers only support Quad SLI did these guys go out and write their own drivers for this or what?
With the current information, I'm not inclined to believe this is real, mainly because the motherboard they use doesn't support more then 1 Nvidia card. And because there was some lag when crysis was running though that may be video quality. Call me a cynic but they have some explaining to do before I believe this.
It supports it, just no SLI. That means no games.
it was lagging in crysis because they were running the crazy rendering software in the background....
Ok so there is no mention of SLI in the movie. They aren't running SLI, they're just running 4 cards, 8 GPUs independently. The cards can still talk to each other, they just can't focus on the *same thing*, AKA one graphics application. This also explains why Crysis was lagging: it was working off of one card while other things were going on in the background.
Reason for AMD Cpu = Hypertransport Bus
Obvious really if you stop reading games magazines for 2 seconds.
Pah!
Be sure to fold for [H]!!
lol, what a great video. That guy was funny, and he was in no way trying to be~