This is going to sound somewhat shallow, but I hope this new installation gets some decent visual design. Look at some of the classic supercomputers, such as the fantastic Thinking Machines CM-1: <a href="http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/cm/CM-1_500w.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/cm/CM-1_500w.gif</a><p>Now look at the current reigning champ in 2010: <a href="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/10/mod-656188tianjin1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/10/mod-65...</a><p>Sure, the visual design of a supercomputing installation doesn't have any bearing on its actual utility. But having a certain presence commands respect—even if the researchers using it know it's just stagecraft, there's an undeniable attraction to working on something that isn't just a great engineering achievement, but also <i>looks the part.</i>
I went to a presentation at my school about this computer. There are two main goals to the project. One is to be a usable supercomputer meaning that it will be much more userfriendly to actually use to write software for. Another is the goal of actually getting 1 petaflop of sustained performance. Whats interesting is they were able to get the building under budget and ahead of schedule due to the housing crisis. They also want to make the computer much more energy efficient and they aim to be more efficient than modern datacenters.
For anyone wondering about the "back to 1" part: the Chinese very recently (this week?) took the spot with their 2.5 petaflop Tianhe-1A. It's made from Xeons, Fermis, and Feiteng-100s. Right now they're having trouble actually utilizing the machine; very little of their software takes advantage of more than a modest number of cores.
What are some real world applications for this bad boy? Is this a for-profit endeavor where real companies can rent this computer out to do stuff with it?
Talking about HPCs anyone at SC10? If you are I'd like to meet up with other HNers at the conference. I'm stuck in a booth until 3pm (3445 ciena demoing some brain imaging app over high bandwidth links) but it be cool to have a hn meetup afterwards in some bar. Only issue will probably be choosing a bar from NO large selection.
It is still kind of mindblowing that the entire Amazon cloud shows up as 231st of the top 500 computing clusters (top500.org). Are all these other systems just sitting around crunching proteins? They should start hooking these bad boys up as EC2 mega-instances.
Does anyone know why there's a ten-fold difference between peak and sustained power? I would have thought it'd be more like 50%, but I don't work with HPCs.
i was really excited when they started construction on the building that houses those machines. it's finished now, but i was able to attend the less than glamorous pre-open house* =]<p>* <a href="http://bit.ly/dkJiaZ" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/dkJiaZ</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/9mEo2e" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/9mEo2e</a>
<p><pre><code> The key component is the hub/switch chip.
The four POWER7 chips in a compute node are
connected to a hub/switch chip, which serves
as an interconnect gateway as well as a
switch that routes traffic between other hub
chips. The system therefore requires no
external network switches or routers,
providing considerable savings in switching
components, cabling, and power.
</code></pre>
Sounds a bit like the design SiCortex had for their machines (before cashflow interruption killed them).