Virgina Tech's System X Slips to Seventh
Virgina Tech's System X Slips to Seventh
by , 12:05 AM EST, November 9th, 2004
Virginia Tech's System X cluster, consisting of 1,100 dual-2.3GHz Xserve G5s, has slipped from third to seventh in the Top 500 List of Supercomputer Sites, while two new entries took first and second.
NEC's Earth Simulator surrendered its reign as the world's fastest supercomputer to IBM's BlueGene/L DD2, which achieved a sustained performance of 70.72 TFlops, or roughly twice that of the Earth Simulator. BlueGene/L features 32,768 processors and will be used by the United State's Department of Energy. SGI's Altix, used by NASA/Ames Research Center and packing over 10,000 processors, took second place with a sustained performance of 51.87 TFlops.
System X, which performed at a respectable 12.25 TFlops, maintains plenty of distinction on the list, however: it's the only self-made system in the Top 100, and the only cluster in the Top 100 built with Xserves. It's also possibly the most affordable, costing about $5.5 million to construct.
Observer Comments
Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:27 am Subject:
Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:46 am Subject: Re: okay, okay...
Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:50 am Subject: Other XServe Cluster
Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:35 am Subject: Re: Other XServe Cluster
Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:57 am Subject: Re: Other XServe Cluster
Tue Nov 09, 2004 10:34 am Subject:
The Top500 list can't actually list it until it's been benchmarked. As I anticipate it's still under construction and testing, it probably hasn't been run through its paces yet.
And it also can't be listed if the government is unwilling to release the specs and speed. However, given that we know about it and the government told us, it seems likely we'll get to find out eventually. A number of the clusters that have gone in at government labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore, etc.) have had published specifications and rather vague descriptions of use (I remember one of Livermore's was listed as 'energy research'.)
Rest assured though, it should show up fairly high on the list.
Jason
Seriously, I understand that they are using Gigabit ethernet, which is an order of magnitude (~10x) slower than the Infiniband interconnect used on System X. That will handicap the performance of COLSA ... possibly helping them to justify an expensive interconnect upgrade from the Army.
It's still great news! Given an equal number of processors, a G5-based supercluster can cream Itaniums and hang with those 1.5GHz SGI Altix processors I haven't heard about 'til now 
. Better still, System X is "complete," so beyond the mere teraflops numbers, clients are actually getting to see the cost-effective power of the G5 in action. There's bound to be some big-time Xserve purchases in the months and years to come, especially after the inevitable Xserve update.
QuoteMace wrote:
Apple has to be careful in pushing xServe in the server esp supercomputing market. Will IBM be offended? It is always in the back of my mind as to the real reason for G5 processor supply problems.
Since IBM makes money off of each G5 made, perhaps they won't mind as much.
But who knows, maybe it's not enough money? I've found, that when "competitors" like these enter into agreements like this, they know this kind of thing will happen and work out all the numbers ahead of time. I'm betting that IBM would be equally happy with a G5 sale as they would with one of their own systems.
(Remember, it's less income, but also less expense because they don't have to build the rest of the computer. It's possible that it's the same amount of profit.)
I'm not basing this on anything, but it's possible.
Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:05 pm Subject: 1100 XServes, 2200 processors …
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