We live in an ecologically minded era, where Ford spends more time talking up the new Mustang's mpg rating than its 0 - 60 times. Appropriate, then, that
supercomputers are now being rated not on ultimate speed but on speed relative to power consumption. Top of the Green500 supercomputer list is the Grape-DR, a Japanese cluster at the University of Tokyo powered by a combination of 128 Intel Core i7-920 processors and four bespoke accelerator chips. That combination enables the system to manage 815.43 megaflops per watt, a good bit higher than the 773.38 rating an
IBM-based machine in Germany managed. That's quite a bit lower than the team hopes to achieve, indicating they can boost that rating by 50 percent by the end of the year. Hopefully by then they invest in some cable management. Two of our staff network engineers passed out after just glancing at the picture above. The third... well, he didn't fare so well.
posted July 13th 2010 11:29AM
Oh what a tangled web we weave!
@DizWhiz
Makes me want to bring a huge pair of scissors and cut all the wires.
It's an eyesore.
@Revolutionary
Makes me want to bring big dog in there . And then watch what happens
@DizWhiz
my old boss would fire me if i set something like that up. who is their IT manager? seriously. if something fails, a little bit of management can help pin point the failing component.
clearly no one in tokyo has an mcse, ccna, or net+.
@tricheboars
I am among several Cisco certified individuals at our company. However, only a handful care to properly manage cables.
@DizWhiz
Where are the computers?
@DizWhiz
The wiring is the more interesting news actually.
Still running 23 TFlops but you can hardly call it a supercomputer by todays standards. The one Engadget compares it to, Germany's Jugene runs a whopping 1 PetaFlop and ranks No.5 on the supercomputer list. I guess that is where architects have to look. Btw, the wiring is much better too.
http://www.fz-juelich.de/jsc/datapool/jugene/BGP_16rack_front.large.jpg
@DizWhiz
JHC, that's messy...
I feel dirty now.
@tricheboars
I wouldnt give those certs too much credit, many of the people in the US that have them are nothing more than certified test-takers.
@DizWhiz *Cringe* Makes me want to break a door down during the night and attack it with some zip ties.
@DizWhiz
A cluster-fuck.
@wywywywy
Some people run them with just the motherboards exposed for cooling and easy access as well as sharing power. Each green square in the picture will be another machine.
Imagine what would happen if you tripped on a cable.
@Ninjakid4
Brings new meaning to peta-flop.
A network cable is unplugged.
@TheEvilMachinist
FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I would just re-arrange a few wires, see if anyone notices. ;-p
May that would speed it up some.
So, what happened to the third staff network engineer?
They just gave up on cable management. I love the tape on the rack holding the wires too.
an intel ad would fit in there..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzi4xfMWMuw
"i've re-plugged a cable to somewhere else"
Bad wiring management! Kind of sucks doesn't it?
Does it play Crysis?
I guess the university doesn't have the money and can't find a sponsor for Racks.
Had to scroll away from the picture - it's pushing my OCD into overdrive
Must... use... cable ties....
@Kaiser
OMG....i'm not the only one who was thinking that.....
Brain almost shut down looking at that picture....
@Kaiser
No! Never cable ties. They can pinch the network cable and damage the little wires inside. Velcro only!
Also, these guys need to look into Middle Atlantic or Lowell Racks and some wire trays.
I'd go nuts on someone if that was my job and I walked in to see that mess of wires everywhere.
Well passing out from looking at the pic is one thing, now imagine if you are engineer who needs to fix something. I'd probably go insane and start eating those cables as spaghetti.
Lol at the table in the middle to help support the metric crap ton or wires
Two Words.
Zip Ties.
that is not clean! these scientists are not maintaining the stereotype.
Can it play crysis?
Can I have it?? I give you $5 (Indian accent)
They passed out after looking at a picture? What a pussy.
Should roll with the new 6-core AMD chips. Those bad bois have awesome power per watt ratings! (and bang per buck too)
@Hobsie No, they dont, all they are is for fools that think cheaper is better - they are like mcdonalds where intel is like a fine francais bistro.
@Ignoramus
You are certainly living up to your name...
In fact there are two of those german computers and they are used for quantumchromdynamics ... Have to look up what this one is for...cant find it.
Does it play Crysis 2?
The square footage in that lab in Tokyo is probably worth more than a big fat Cray, but they choose instead of use widely spread out kitchen racks of spaghetti, random furniture, and packing tape.
Way to go.
Oh wow, it's "green"... so exciting... NOT.
I know I'm being ignorant here and willfully perpetuating a stereotype, albeit one that is actually positive and pejorative in its nature, but rather than see that up there as a mess of wires I'm more inclined to think it must be an extremely clever set-up simply because Japanese people are behind it. Long sentence is over.
@vanglorious
crap. that should read "not pejorative".
I see a cable unplugged
The name is Grape. It's a vineyard!
god,
for one: I see too many screens in there (are these laptops at the forefront on the middle row?)
they should get the motherboards in a casing, no screens no mouse, nothing extra that is not necessary for the processing.
remove the network cards, and plug in a single multi-RJ45 card
then one remote console, to connect to all of them.
a KVM switch if you need to connect physically (remote control on intel is not as good as SUN's, no console or ALOM)
get the cables properly done, so they do not interfere with heat exhange.
close the cabinets, and add inverted/oppesed bottom and top fans, thus reducing the need for the fans on each machine to draw power.
in each box, remove the power, and use a centralised one. to gain in efficiency.
all cheap solution, this is a great feat, but not optimized
That rack in the middle looks a little like the back of my home entertainment center.
what do they need it to do exactly?
Is that a table?!?
FYI - this is the top of the *LITTLE* Green500 list. Which I notice in the keywords but not the article.
As others have mentioned this is barely a supercomputer, it has in fact fallen off the top500 list, but it is still powerful, and more important powerfully efficient, hence our addition of a little list to the site.
But could it play Crysis and operate Skynet simultaneously. (0: