3rd Fastest Computer in the World ...

[llbbl]

Can you guess who its made by???


Betcha never would have unless ur an ubergeek and have already heard about this story, speaking of which, someone needs to post this in our news section. I think it was back in November of 2003 there might have been an article. Anyways ....


Its an APPLE !!

Their new G5 64 bit chip kicks some major ass. They built the system using G5 desktop machines, but since then Apple has come out the the XServe Rackmount architecture and you can achieve a much greater processing power density than their current configuration.

They are running OS X on it too because being originally FreeBSD they have native support for distributed file systems, or at least i'm guessing. From their movie (http://www.apple.com/hardware/video/virginiatech/)it sure seems like that is the case.

Check it out I was impressed. Anyone want to do a comparison on 64 bit chips?

The companies that have chips available are Apple, SGI, AMD and Intel(assuming they have their chip out .. I don't know). Not sure if HP still makes the Alpha's, I had heard that it was discontinued.


Oh yea and here is more info about the system that was built.


Rank Site
Country/Year Computer / Processors
Manufacturer Rmax
Rpeak

1 Earth Simulator Center
Japan/2002 Earth-Simulator / 5120
NEC 35860
40960

2 Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States/2002 ASCI Q - AlphaServer SC45, 1.25 GHz / 8192
HP 13880
20480

3 Virginia Tech
United States/2003 X
1100 Dual 2.0 GHz Apple G5/Mellanox Infiniband 4X/Cisco GigE / 2200
Self-made 10280
17600

4 NCSA
United States/2003 Tungsten
PowerEdge 1750, P4 Xeon 3.06 GHz, Myrinet / 2500
Dell 9819
15300

5 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
United States/2003 Mpp2
Integrity rx2600 Itanium2 1.5 GHz, Quadrics / 1936
HP 8633
11616

http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/

[ECA]

TG,

Apple dont make CHIPS.... Its motorolla...
And IBM has chips also.

[Archon]

hmm... apple still sucks ass

..please dont ban me!

[llbbl]

Apple still sucks ass for gaming btw ... they great for workstation as you can see as long as the software you need to run is available on that platform ... kinda like Linux if u think about it.

So you can generalize what hardware you should be working with by the broad statement, An you can quote me ...

"It depends on the application"

[ECA]

The companies that have chips available are Apple, SGI, AMD and Intel(assuming they have their chip out .. I don't know). Not sure if HP still makes the Alpha's, I had heard that it was discontinued.


You said Chips, not systems..
And even toshiba makes chips for laptops. And I think Texas instrumants also does

[llbbl]

I am only concerned with pice and performance. Are you telling me that Toshiba and TI make 64 bit CPU chips or other chips that are used in basic calculating devices like calculators and TV's?

Don't be insulting, try to add something to the thread. No one wants to read through an arguement over who said what. You could have asked what I meant if you were not sure.

[Archon]

okay kids, calm down

[ECA]

No, TI makes alot of DSP chips for audio boards.

http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT061101221315
And looks like TI is making Spark Chips in 64 bit.

Although the development delays associated with Itanium and the entire IA64 program are now legendary, and even the source of amusement for some in the industry, the past year hasn’t been kind to the 64-bit RISC incumbents either. Sun Microsystems finally shipped their UltraSPARC-III (US-III) after a multi-year post design development cycle that included at least one full process shrink. Despite its extended gestation period the US-III is a surprisingly weak performer. The promised higher frequency follow-on US-III device based on copper interconnect has yet to materialize. This has lent credibility to rumors that the US-III was experiencing yield problems and Sun was considering an alternative fab partner to complement or replace Texas Instruments.


I a discussion of 64bit is a bit ridiculous. As they still have a few bugs to work out. I would still rather them make intelligent Cards(audio and video) that had there own CPU and did the work the Main CPU is doing now. This alone could speed up the system 40-80%

[ECA]

http://bcl.co.nz/info/64-bit_processors.html

and 64 bit has been here along while. Just not in a Consumer based machine.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by ECA
http://bcl.co.nz/info/64-bit_processors.html

and 64 bit has been here along while. Just not in a Consumer based machine.

The SGI Tezero supports up to 8 gig of RAM. I bet that their other machines support that much as well as long as their mobo's have enough slots.


One of the real benefits, though, is the ability to access more physical memory. At the moment, and without using dirty programming tricks and workarounds, a 32-bit processor can only access 4GB of memory. This is because each bit of memory needs to have an address so the processor can find it. When you have 4GB of memory, you’ve used up every number a 32-bit processor can represent as an address, and there’s no (easy) way for the processor to be able to recognise more memory.



Intel's 64 bit chip is the Itanium (http://www.intel.com/products/server/processors/server/itanium2/) and it is their 3rd attempt at a successful core design. I didn't know that. Wow I looked at the spec sheet, (http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/linecard/linecard_srvrwrkstn.pdf) the 8870chipset supports up to 128 GB of RAM. Their chip runs faster than the SGI too. "1.50 GHz, 1.40 GHz, 1.30 GHz " Looks like they are the only ones to have EPIC as well, it sounds like a good thing.


Intel's 64-bit technology is called IA64, and has a number of interesting features. First is EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing), which differs from the CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) of common desktop processors, and the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) technology of other high-end processors. Basically, EPIC is all about allowing the processor to run as many instructions simultaneously as possible. As such, the Itanium range of processors has heaps of registers, pipelines and advanced speculation and prediction capabilities to allow it to manage this.



Itanium compared to the AMD 64 when this article was written it sounds like Intel wins, but the AMD chip wasn't released yet. There was no mention of the IBM :rolleyes: 64 bit G5 chip.That article was very helpful, thanks ECA!! I am going to see if I can find a comparison.


Unlike Intel, AMD has gone for a more conservative approach. Instead of making a dedicated 64-bit only chip, the AMD vision is of a dual-purpose chip, one that can run 32-bit and 64-bit code in hardware, and ideally get the best of both worlds. This is more like the processors that made the transition from 16-bit computing to 32-bit. The 32-bit 386 came out in 1996, but it wasn't until the Pentium Pro in 1995 before things would get 32-bit all-through.


As such, the AMD64 architecture is not as revolutionary a change as IA64. The first AMD64 chip is the Opteron, targeted at the mid-end server and development market, and later this year we'll see the Athlon 64, which is targeted more at the desktop, workstation and consumer markets.


Both processors are similar in nature to the current Athlon range, and the main differences are in the addition of eight more general purpose registers, and eight more SIMD registers (for SSE and SSE2 code), all of which are 64-bit. This allows the processor to handle 64-bit data and instructions, and gives programmers a little more flexibility with the increase in registers, although the increase cannot compare with the number of registers in the EPIC Itanium.

[llbbl]

http://www.gen-x-pc.com/andvshammer.htm


All things being equal, Clawhammer silicon will be far less
expensive to manufacture than Itanium, even before you
consider Itanium's extra L3 cache chips and its elaborate
mechanical housing. For both single-processor and
multiprocessor systems, AMD offers the more economical
option for system makers.

[llbbl]

hahah .. 1.5 Ghz Itanium is $7,900 while the 2.2 Ghz Clawhammer is only $740

Which one seems more practical to you guys?

[KGElster]

The desktop market is broken down as follows:
3% Apple
3% Linux
1% other
93% Windows

[techfreak]

Originally posted by KGElster
The desktop market is broken down as follows:
3% Apple
3% Linux
1% other
93% Windows

Sounds about right. I heard Apple is really trying to get into the gaming scene though, I wonder if their G5 will take off in that department.

[llbbl]

Here I found a good review (9/03)on the Intel EE and AMD 64 FX.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1276873,00.asp

Are we still at the point where AMD is king while we wait for Intel to come to market with their next version the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition? I can't find it for sale anywhere.

No one has tried to build a distrubted system using the AMD chips. That would be interesting to see.

I found a good review / comparison (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112749,pg,1,00.asp)of AMD vs G5..

Here is the chart at the end. AMD wins in some areas and G5 wins in other areas.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112749,pg,8,00.asp

[ECA]

Originally posted by KGElster
The desktop market is broken down as follows:
3% Apple
3% Linux
1% other
93% Windows

This is a list based on consumers.
And comsumers dont know the differences, only price.

If you look at OLD news, germany, government, Quit windows and went to linux, so did half of europe.
Middle eastern businesses Stoped using Windows also.
Even many States int he US, Quit windows.

all for the same reason...Cost.
Paying $16,000 for each machine OS, updates, extra progs just to use windows was costing to much. And in the end Linux had as much handling as was FREE.

[llbbl]

Well anyways.. . back to 64 bit chips.. I think AMD 64 FX is the best thing on the market at the moment.

[Archon]

hear hear!

[ECA]

send me money and i will buy one...

[llbbl]

Here is an update on the Top 500 list


Called MACH 5 (Multiple Advanced Computers for Hypersonic research), the US$5.8 million system is designed to do aero-thermodynamic modeling for the Army's Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center. It is expected to be operational by November and, if it were benchmarked today, would rank just behind the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center's $350 million Earth Simulator, Colsa said.

At the same time, an Apple-based supercomputer at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which has 1,100 nodes and rocketed to third place last November in the semi-annual Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, failed to appear on a revised version of the list that was published Monday, leaving Apple unrepresented on the Top500.

Virginia Tech, which was Apple's first entry into the top echelons of the world's supercomputers, was unable to submit a benchmark because it is in the process of building a new supercomputer, based on Apple's latest rack-mounted server, the Xserve G5, according to Alex Grossman, director of server and storage hardware at Apple.

Virginia Tech announced plans to migrate its supercomputer to the Xserve G5 in January, just months after it was built. The university has subsequently dismantled its original system, which was based on the desktop Power Mac G5 system, Grossman said.


http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1437/040622applehpc/

[Ioman]

I thought I had one of the world's fastest computers!! Unreal Tournament at 120 FPS !!! w00t

[llbbl]

Damn cursed Search tool I can't find that thread where we were debating over the AMD 64 chip and it being used in super computers .. hmmm

[llbbl]

I search on tons of different keywords and nothing comes up ... anyone remember this thread???

[llbbl]

help me find it!

[llbbl]

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has elected to buy an IBM supercomputer with 2,304 AMD Opteron processors, the companies plan to announce Tuesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. The news comes a few months after Linux Networx announced that the same lab is buying a machine with 2,132 of Intel's new "Nocona" model Xeon processors.

The Nocona chips, introduced in numerous servers Monday, are Intel's first server chips to include the 64-bit extensions that AMD pioneered with its Opteron chips. The 64-bit abilities make it easier to handle more than 4GB of memory.

The Army will use the systems at its Major Shared Resource Center, one of four sites used for Department of Defense supercomputing needs such as basic science, weapons design and chemical-reactions research.

The IBM system, made of dual-processor machines running SuSE Linux from Novell, are connected with high-speed networking gear from Myricom into a supercomputing cluster. It's expected to have computational capacity of 10 trillion calculations per second, or 10 teraflops, a level reached by only a few computers today.

http://news.com.com/Army+supercomputing+drafts+Intel%2C+AMD/2100-1006_3-5294109.html?tag=nefd.top


I want to post this there

[llbbl]

I think we talked about the Apple 64 bit chips as well....

[llbbl]

I will combine threads when we find it ....+(

[ECA]

ya, i remember it...has a good discussion going and it was wiped off the front page.
about 1.5 months ago..
LOVe to see a multi G5 system.

[ECA]

Search aint going back, before this NEW board setup.

[ECA]

http://forums.designtechnica.com/showthread.php?t=3913

[llbbl]

OMG thanks ECA !!!

[llbbl]

woohoo Merged all together now

[ECA]

I just looked in my POSTS, and which I was in... And about 1.5 months ago.

[llbbl]

It should have come up when I searched for supercomputer or super computer ... I bet it will now .. lol

[llbbl]

hey the new data is out !!


Rank Site
Country/Year Computer / Processors
Manufacturer Rmax
Rpeak
1 Earth Simulator Center
Japan/2002 Earth-Simulator / 5120
NEC 35860
40960

2 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2004 Thunder
Intel Itanium2 Tiger4 1.4GHz - Quadrics / 4096
California Digital Corporation 19940
22938

3 Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States/2002 ASCI Q - AlphaServer SC45, 1.25 GHz / 8192
HP 13880
20480

4 IBM - Rochester
United States/2004 BlueGene/L DD1 Prototype (0.5GHz PowerPC 440 w/Custom) / 8192
IBM/ LLNL 11680
16384

5 NCSA
United States/2003 Tungsten
PowerEdge 1750, P4 Xeon 3.06 GHz, Myrinet / 2500
Dell 9819
15300

6 ECMWF
United Kingdom/2004 eServer pSeries 690 (1.9 GHz Power4+) / 2112
IBM 8955
16051

7 Institute of Physical and Chemical Res. (RIKEN)
Japan/2004 RIKEN Super Combined Cluster / 2048
Fujitsu 8728
12534

8 IBM - Thomas Watson Research Center
United States/2004 BlueGene/L DD2 Prototype (0.7 GHz PowerPC 440) / 4096
IBM/ LLNL 8655
11469

9 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
United States/2003 Mpp2
Integrity rx2600 Itanium2 1.5 GHz, Quadrics / 1936
HP 8633
11616

10 Shanghai Supercomputer Center
China/2004 Dawning 4000A, Opteron 2.2 GHz, Myrinet / 2560
Dawning 8061
11264

11 Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States/2003 Lightning
Opteron 2 GHz, Myrinet / 2816
Linux Networx 8051
11264

12 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2002 MCR Linux Cluster Xeon 2.4 GHz - Quadrics / 2304
Linux Networx/Quadrics 7634
11060

13 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2000 ASCI White, SP Power3 375 MHz / 8192
IBM 7304
12288

14 NERSC/LBNL
United States/2002 Seaborg
SP Power3 375 MHz 16 way / 6656
IBM 7304
9984

15 NCSA
United States/2004 TeraGrid, Itanium2 1.3/1.5 GHZ, Myrinet / 1776
IBM 7215
10259

16 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2003 xSeries Cluster Xeon 2.4 GHz - Quadrics / 1920
IBM/Quadrics 6586
9216

17 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2004 Lilac
xSeries Xeon 3.06 GHz, Quadrics / 1540
IBM 6232
9425

18 HPCx
United Kingdom/2004 eServer pSeries 690 (1.7 GHz Power4+) / 1600
IBM 6188
10880

19 Grid Technology Research Center, AIST
Japan/2004 AIST Super Cluster P-32
AIST Super Cluster P-32, Opteron 2.0 GHz, Myrinet / 2200
IBM 6155
8800

20 Oak Ridge National Laboratory
United States/2004 Cray X1 / 504
Cray Inc. 5895
6451


http://www.top500.org/list/2004/06/

[llbbl]

no apple ...

[llbbl]

look at 9 and 10 ...

A less powerful Itanium with less number of processors achieves higher scores than a faster Opteron with more processors.

[ECA]

I still see Alpha, and Power PC there.

[llbbl]

"United Kingdom/2004 eServer pSeries 690 (1.7 GHz Power4+) / 1600"

This is the apple chip?

[ECA]

Nope, Intell..
And Alpha is DEC. Digital equipment Corp.

[llbbl]

Nope, Intell..
And Alpha is DEC. Digital equipment Corp.

Its an IBM machine .. It says above .. and they make the chips for Apple ... and Power4 sounds like an older Apple machine ...

[ECA]

Sorry,
yes Alpha is IBM,

But, power 4+ Im not sure but the P series is IBM...may be there NEW Power PC chip.

[llbbl]

Monday they release the final Alpha chip ... Say good bye =)

[llbbl]

The Unites States space agency NASA has unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer at its Ames Research Centre in California, where India-born astronaut Kalpana Chawla worked for years, in honour of the seven crew members of spacecraft Columbia which crashed last year.

Dubbed 'Project Columbia', the $50 million computer built by Silicon Graphics Inc. is composed of 10,240 processors in 20 units, making it one of the world's most powerful supercomputing systems.

The system, which was unveiled on Tuesday, was built and installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility at Ames in less than 120 days.

Silicon Graphics also claimed that NASA's new Intel Itanium 2 processor-based Columbia supercomputer is the most powerful computer in the world.

http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2004/oct/27supercomp.htm

Check this out. Now NASA has the one of the top computers in the world.

http://im.rediff.com/money/2004/oct/27nasa.jpg

[spankers]

And what OS does it run? Win XP with SP2! Half the nodes are used for redundancy in the event XP crashes or is slowed to a standstill by Spyware.

Oh... wait, I was dreaming.... all processors run from a common Linux kernel image. From cellphones to supercomputers... Linux.

[llbbl]

That must have been a nightmare... If you were dreaming means you wish that would be the case.

[ECA]

It would be REAL funny if they did use Windows.
1/2 the processing power just to run background tasks.

[llbbl]

http://home.earthlink.net/~infernofilecabinet4/XpSetupsP_T/Images/time1.JPG

[llbbl]

It is being assembled for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, a US Department of Energy lab (DOE).

DOE test results show that Blue Gene/L has managed speeds of 70.72 teraflops. The current top machine, Japan's NEC Earth Simulator, clocks up 35.86.

Due next week, the Top 500 list officially charts the fastest computers in the world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3983131.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40490000/jpg/_40490543_ibm_bluegene203b.jpg

[llbbl]

The NASA computer above:

The new supercomputer achieved sustained performance of 42.7 trillion calculations per second (teraflops), eclipsing the performance of every supercomputer operating today.

Built from SGI Altix systems and driven by 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors, Columbia's 16-system result beats NEC's Earth Simulator, rated at 35.86 teraflops, and IBM's recent in-house Blue Gene/L experiment, rated at 36.01 teraflops.

[llbbl]

Here is the current list.

http://www.top500.org/lists/2004/11/

1 IBM/DOE
United States/2004 BlueGene/L beta-System
BlueGene/L DD2 beta-System (0.7 GHz PowerPC 440) / 32768
IBM 70720
91750
2 NASA/Ames Research Center/NAS
United States/2004 Columbia
SGI Altix 1.5 GHz, Voltaire Infiniband / 10160
SGI 51870
60960
3 The Earth Simulator Center
Japan/2002 Earth-Simulator / 5120
NEC 35860
40960
4 Barcelona Supercomputer Center
Spain/2004 MareNostrum
eServer BladeCenter JS20 (PowerPC970 2.2 GHz), Myrinet / 3564
IBM 20530
31363
5 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States/2004 Thunder
Intel Itanium2 Tiger4 1.4GHz - Quadrics / 4096
California Digital Corporation 19940
22938

[gary_hendricks]

Totally agree. Apple still sucks at gaming applications.