http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/ Engadget Comments for Fastest-ever Windows HPC cluster nets 68.5 teraflops http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
9472 cores, assuming two socket quad-core processors equates to 1184 servers. If these are regular 1U servers (not blades or twin servers) then that would require 28.2 racks (42U fully populated)

That is a pretty large cluster, but by no means the largest system of its kind.

Now lets look at a GPU solution. Lets assume you can put two of these cards into a 3U rackmount server. That means you need 4736 servers just to house them (assuming one GPU core per card). To house that you will need 338.29 racks alone!]]>Jun 25th 2008 3:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/

I stooped that low eh..]]>Jun 25th 2008 3:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/29/researchers-create-supercomputer-with-four-geforce-9800-gx2-card/

Look a supe compuer made out of Grafx Cards!

A processor is a processor! It does not matter what their intended use is. All prcessors are designed to crunch numbers.]]>Jun 25th 2008 3:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_s1070.html
70 of these would beat out your 1184 servers
four Telsa gpus per unit, 280 total gpus 67,200 stream processors]]>Jun 25th 2008 4:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
That wasn't my point. The video was to say that you can make an affordable one. Yes, granted you have 8 processors going all at once. You should just get a Mac Pro, because it uses 8 also and costs less, but we don't consider that a supercomputer. Granted it's fast, but it's not a supercomputer.

My point originally was that it consumes more power than a normal cpu unit. Also like stated earlier you would have to have many cabinets chained together to run something that size.]]>Jun 25th 2008 4:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
I know of several cases where they are giving MS clusters to academic customers, and I am pretty sure this cluster is probably a 'donation' of some sort.]]>Jun 25th 2008 3:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
No wonder everyone hate MS]]>Jun 25th 2008 4:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
Ummm, I don't know if you read the article, but I don't see any mention of how much this cluster cost. The cost of licensing the software from Microsoft was probably ridiculous on its own. Then you have to add the cost of hardware of OVER 1000 servers and their switching/interconnects, etc. Oh yes, POWER consumption.

Most people who want to pursue cluster computing have the money to spend, and much could be saved by NOT using Microsoft's HPC OS.

You need to look at the rest of the list of supercomputers, and you'll soon see that I believe that every other supercomputer on that list uses much less hardware (in terms of CPU cores), which results in a much lower cost. Oh yes, thanks to less hardware, you have lower power consumption, reducing monthly costs further.

This is probably a horrible analogy, but it's like Microsoft bringing 100 small cars and saying they can tow 20 tons total, and everybody else brings a handful of bigger pick-up trucks, and they can tow much more for much less money.]]>Jun 26th 2008 12:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
It is funny that this shows up now, since this system has been on the top500 list since June 2007 and was originally on the 8th spot (http://top500.org/system/8757).

What is also funny is the computer description "PowerEdge 1955, 2.33 GHz, Infiniband, Windows Server 2008/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4"

As you can see Windows is not he only OS!!
]]>Jun 25th 2008 3:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 3:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 4:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 4:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
The current #1 is over 100 times more powerful and uses 30% less processor cores. I wouldn't be bragging until their performance to hardware ratio comes more inline with the rest of the contenders.]]>Jun 25th 2008 4:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://top500.org/system/9485
This is made up of 6,562 Dual Core AMD Chips (so 13,124 Cores)
AND
12,240 Cell chips (Similar to the PS3 Processor)
So thats like 25,000 Cores total.

# 23 is Abe which is the one mentioned in this article and is said to have 1200 Servers, each is Dual Proc and each Proc is Quad Core. That is 9,600 Cores total.
http://top500.org/system/details/8757

Next time do some research before you open your mouth.]]>Jun 25th 2008 7:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 4:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
Is this Niche supercomputing or Windows based supercomputing?

I worked at a company that had a small HPC Cluster and we used it for protein folding type stuff, similar to folding@home. I know most of our direct competitors had similar systems.

HPC clusters are widely used in big business.

Windows based HPC may not be a big thing today, but thats kind of the point right? MS is trying to convince people to give it as try. Once it catches on and get some backing, I'm sure you will see it gets more and more support.

So what niche are we talking about then?]]>Jun 25th 2008 7:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Indipendently from the kind of crap that your firm choose to use (for all sorts of different and imponderable reasons) the better alternatives that are and have been out there on the market since a long time are too many to be listed here.

I've got nothing against ignorance per se, but when it gets mixed with arrogance then the cocktail becomes just unbearable (not to mention dangerous too)]]>Jun 25th 2008 8:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 5:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 6:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 8:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
Indipendently from the crap that you firm choose to use (for all sorts different and imponderable reasons) the more practical and generally better alternatives that are and have been out there on the market since a long time, are too many to be listed here.

I have got nothing against ignorance per se, but when mixed with arrogance the resulting cocktail becomes unbearable (and dangerous too)]]>Jun 25th 2008 8:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/Jun 25th 2008 9:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
http://www.top500.org/system/8757

]]>Jun 25th 2008 10:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/fastest-ever-windows-hpc-cluster-nets-68-5-teraflops/
I wonder why they set out to do this, if not to come close to the top ten?
I miss Bill Gates being CEO]]>Jun 25th 2008 10:30PM