University of Montreal getting a Super computer

[Mantat]

The UdeM si getting a new computer cluster. At the cost of 33m$ (can) for a theorical computional power of 768GFlop and with possible upgrade to get up to 3Tflop.

Link there in french

I dont understand.... Why get a SGI when they could have got a cluster of Xserve for much less and proven record of better cost/performance ?

 

[G4scott]

It's the same type of thing with my school, The University of Texas at Austin. We're putting tons of money into a cray-dell supercomputer, but we could get an xServe cluster for a lot less. We are getting an xServe cluster, though, but it'll start at 8 - 16 nodes, and nobody knows exactly how big it'll get.

 

[Makosuke]

It could be a boneheaded beaurocratic decision, it could be because SGI is offering the computer pre-packaged as opposed to Apple's do-it-yourself cluster, or it could just be that a simple cluster won't do what they need--I'm not familiar with SGI's supercomputing options, but if they offer vector processors or high-speed-interconnect multiprocessor systems, then a supercomputer built by them would offer much higer performance on certain kinds of operations.

It all depends on what the University is trying to do whether this was a reasonable decision or a waste of money.