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Virginia Tech Supercomputer?
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It would be a good idea to run G5 Xserves... if they existed As far as we know, there will be no G5s in Xserves, ever
About the fans... I'm guessing those fans are not meant to run continously for long periods of time. Can you imagine the failure rate??? I'd hate to have to be the one to replace those. There will have to be software built to control those.
As for delivery, they could space those out. If anyone believes you can set up a cluster like this overnight, you're a sucker. Just laying down the building framework will take a week or two. Then when they do get the machines, each system will have to be tested on-site before they are attached to the cluster (the chances of all 1100 being flawless would be very small) This project will take awhile. Between Apples' (notorious) delay(s) in deliveries and the time it'll take to set this up (especially since you're dealing with both revision A hardware and a first-time situation), I don't think Virgina Tech is going to make it for the Fall Super 500.
I'm guessing the real rush here is that AMD has recently had a lot of major contracts to drop new clusters into the top 10 of the Super 500, which could knock Apple's cluster out of the top 10 before it even gets a chance. That would be a huge loss for Apple and it's marketing department (especially as a first attempt into the 500 which could spur more orders) I'm guessing IBM is also helping out since they have much more experience in these super-structured computers. Otherwise, we would have heard of a huge hiring spree in Apple's support center to manage such a cluster (as it stands now, it'd take the whole lot of them to support just the 1100 G5s at VT)
About the fans... I'm guessing those fans are not meant to run continously for long periods of time. Can you imagine the failure rate??? I'd hate to have to be the one to replace those. There will have to be software built to control those.
As for delivery, they could space those out. If anyone believes you can set up a cluster like this overnight, you're a sucker. Just laying down the building framework will take a week or two. Then when they do get the machines, each system will have to be tested on-site before they are attached to the cluster (the chances of all 1100 being flawless would be very small) This project will take awhile. Between Apples' (notorious) delay(s) in deliveries and the time it'll take to set this up (especially since you're dealing with both revision A hardware and a first-time situation), I don't think Virgina Tech is going to make it for the Fall Super 500.
I'm guessing the real rush here is that AMD has recently had a lot of major contracts to drop new clusters into the top 10 of the Super 500, which could knock Apple's cluster out of the top 10 before it even gets a chance. That would be a huge loss for Apple and it's marketing department (especially as a first attempt into the 500 which could spur more orders) I'm guessing IBM is also helping out since they have much more experience in these super-structured computers. Otherwise, we would have heard of a huge hiring spree in Apple's support center to manage such a cluster (as it stands now, it'd take the whole lot of them to support just the 1100 G5s at VT)
re: why towers vs x-serves
if they decide to replace some of the units in the cluster with quad-4ghz machines in two years, they can take some towers out and use them as desktop machines in computer labs or elsewhere.
this was a big selling point when the oil exploration company hess decided to build a linux cluster from desktop machines. they were renting a unix supercomputer from ibm for over a million a year, and they decided they could use the same software (perhaps after a minor recompile) and get equivalent results for less than a million dollars one-time cost (they would own the machines).
or they could just keep adding new machines without decomissioning the older ones.
afc
if they decide to replace some of the units in the cluster with quad-4ghz machines in two years, they can take some towers out and use them as desktop machines in computer labs or elsewhere.
this was a big selling point when the oil exploration company hess decided to build a linux cluster from desktop machines. they were renting a unix supercomputer from ibm for over a million a year, and they decided they could use the same software (perhaps after a minor recompile) and get equivalent results for less than a million dollars one-time cost (they would own the machines).
or they could just keep adding new machines without decomissioning the older ones.
afc
Because OS X has never been designed for large scale clustering, nor would they want to handle all those CPU cycles of running a GUI on every box (talk about a waste of billions of cycles a second). If you want to get in the top 5 with speed records, you have to go with a headless OS with no graphical subsystem.
You can quite easily run mac os x sans gui...
clustering would not work with quake, you would need to use software specially designed to distribute its processing over a network. Given that most mac games cant even distribute themselves over two processors millimeters away from each other sharing a bus and system controller i would find it very unlikely to have a cluster-able game.
clustering would not work with quake, you would need to use software specially designed to distribute its processing over a network. Given that most mac games cant even distribute themselves over two processors millimeters away from each other sharing a bus and system controller i would find it very unlikely to have a cluster-able game.
Interesting...
A friend who is into Mac's and a Virginia Tech grad called me about this prior to it hitting the web. I thought it seemed a bit odd, I guess not...
Sounds like apple screwed some customers over this... Sounds like Apple just wants bragging rights on being a super computer so bumped other orders for VT. Not that I blame them it will be good marketing if it makes it into the top 5... Still sucks for those who get bumped... I heard talk of $150 for bumped orders, that would soften the blow.
A friend who is into Mac's and a Virginia Tech grad called me about this prior to it hitting the web. I thought it seemed a bit odd, I guess not...
Sounds like apple screwed some customers over this... Sounds like Apple just wants bragging rights on being a super computer so bumped other orders for VT. Not that I blame them it will be good marketing if it makes it into the top 5... Still sucks for those who get bumped... I heard talk of $150 for bumped orders, that would soften the blow.
Originally posted by applekid
How do you make a Mac cluster anyhow? I wouldn't mind combining 2 G4 towers at my dad's office and use it to make a fast Quake machine. Again with my naive thinking (probably)
Anyways, just think, one of those G5s could've been yours
Sure kid, just fan the fires. Apple cannot afford to alienate one of their key markets so yes putting 1100 on the truck to VT is a very smart move.
OTOH, I wonder how many people cancelled their dual 2 ghz G5 orders? Do you think it was over 1100?
Re: Interesting...
So,
IBM released beta compilers with open MPI which is necessary to the cluster.
AND
Virginia Tech got the machine during 1st week of September.
Now we could see within 5 among TOP500, newspaper and TV will say, "Virginia Tech today anounced ...
So,
IBM released beta compilers with open MPI which is necessary to the cluster.
AND
Virginia Tech got the machine during 1st week of September.
Now we could see within 5 among TOP500, newspaper and TV will say, "Virginia Tech today anounced ...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: G5 Fans
Most supercomputers have dedicated air conditioning units. They might just deactivate the fans utterly. This is a "special order" after all...
It's not unreasonable to assume that there will be, eventually.
Virginia Tech, just like any other university, has ready access to a large part-time workforce that doesn't have to be paid much. I suspect a lot of this work isn't that difficult
Originally posted by whooley
p.s. 9900 fans? Can anything be done to harness all that wind energy??
Most supercomputers have dedicated air conditioning units. They might just deactivate the fans utterly. This is a "special order" after all...
It's not unreasonable to assume that there will be, eventually.
Virginia Tech, just like any other university, has ready access to a large part-time workforce that doesn't have to be paid much. I suspect a lot of this work isn't that difficult
And they are all maxed out too! wow.....
I should call and beg for one. I'm quite a good actor, I think i could really stir up their compassion and they would end up giving me one. Hmmmmm which role should I play..... Single dad with 3 young kids and not enough time? Nah.... 17 year old boy who is living on his own because his parents kicked him out for his love of computers and now he has to work 5 jobs to scrape by? Nah.... 16 year old boy whose parents refuse to help him out with buying a new computer, so he is stuck with a PC, and is too much of a tight-wad to buy the computer with his own money? Wait...... that wouldn't be a role at all.
scem0
I should call and beg for one. I'm quite a good actor, I think i could really stir up their compassion and they would end up giving me one. Hmmmmm which role should I play..... Single dad with 3 young kids and not enough time? Nah.... 17 year old boy who is living on his own because his parents kicked him out for his love of computers and now he has to work 5 jobs to scrape by? Nah.... 16 year old boy whose parents refuse to help him out with buying a new computer, so he is stuck with a PC, and is too much of a tight-wad to buy the computer with his own money? Wait...... that wouldn't be a role at all
.scem0
I can't even imagine Folding on that thing...MacRumors could be #1 in like 20 minutes after that thing is done...
I have to laugh
I have to laugh every time someone ranks a story like this negative.
Yeah, Apple having one of the top 5 fastest super computers in the world is bad _how_, exactly? Is it because (currently) 10 guys aren't getting their machines for a month? Hmmm?
If anyone was shocked their order was delayed for any number of reasons then they must be new to the Apple scene. I feel your pain, guys, but that's the mode of operation at Apple.
I have to laugh every time someone ranks a story like this negative.
Yeah, Apple having one of the top 5 fastest super computers in the world is bad _how_, exactly? Is it because (currently) 10 guys aren't getting their machines for a month? Hmmm?
If anyone was shocked their order was delayed for any number of reasons then they must be new to the Apple scene. I feel your pain, guys, but that's the mode of operation at Apple.
There are some caveats that need to be placed here:
IBM is the vendor on contract to build most of these AMD Opteron clusters so it is never a case of Apple/IBM v. AMD or some such. Right now, IBM is the only tier-one vendor of AMD CPUs, so nearly all high scale HPC clusters will go through IBM. (Yes, you can build a renderfarm through RackSaver, but this isn't the same thing.) Besides, AMD rents IBM Fishkill for design and fabrication.
To my knowledge there are only three Opteron clusters in the works that would be eligible for the Top500: Japans AIST 2116CPU @ 11 Teraflops, China's Dawning Information 2000 CPU @ 10 teraflops, and Red Storm 10,000CPU @ 36Tflops. If such a Mac cluster were to be built, it would beat out the second and be completed before the third: this is hardly able to push such a computer from 3rd out of the top 10!
I agree that it doesn't seem practical to have a cluster up and running in time for the Fall Top500. Usually clusters take a while to set up. This leads me to think that the 2200 G5 cluster of VATech only slightly related to the 2x2Ghz delays.
Actually Mac OS X makes a better base OS to cluster than Linux. Yes, more research has been done clustering Linux boxes, but Mach is definitely superior in this regard. Besides, I'd imagine they wouldn't focus on handling clustering at the kernel level, but would run an application level message passing clustering system like MPich. I have no idea if LinPack can be run on top of this layer since I don't do HPC. Macs have been clustered on small scales for a long time this way.
As for waiting for XServes, I wonder what everyone is smoking. Clearly the thing to wait for is the 4-way or 2-way PPC970 IBM Blades and rackservers (1Q 2004) with AIX and the #1 vendor in the top 500 than a G5 Xserve with an uncertain release date and a vendor with no previous clustering experience.
Finally, in the PC world, the fan is controlled by the BIOS, not the OS. This is from experience, because I set machines to always on full fan when doing memory tests--in one case, my computer kept shutting down because the fan would keep turning off, thank god it was a Pentium.
I don't believe this is the reason for the delays, but it does allow one to be amusing. As one of my friends put it, ``Damn them, Virginia Tech probably has my machine.''
Re: Interesting...
Yeah, I don't condone it, either. But, if anyone really thought their personal order for a G5 dual 2 GHz to play UT2003 on was going to get precedence over the 5th faster super computer in the world, they're smokin' herb.
Yeah, I don't condone it, either. But, if anyone really thought their personal order for a G5 dual 2 GHz to play UT2003 on was going to get precedence over the 5th faster super computer in the world, they're smokin' herb.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: G5 Fans
I certainly hope they wouldn't do that! Lots of people leave their machines on 24/7 nowadays... what if the OS crashes? The fans just stop and the machine overheats? Scary thought.
I certainly hope they wouldn't do that! Lots of people leave their machines on 24/7 nowadays... what if the OS crashes? The fans just stop and the machine overheats? Scary thought.
Hell no.
If anyone doesn't want one, screw you and good job.
I think anyone who ever wanted a computer should want one of the fastest computers.
Gimme a break, there are no mass cancelations.
No way in hell.
Yup, turn in a WU every .2 Seconds.
/\- Plug for MacRumors Folding Team -/\
Re: G5 Fans
I'd like to hear more about this. I don't doubt that the fans would be software controlled, but is that software specifically part of the operating system? I don't have to think for long to come up with scenarios where that would be potentially disastrous (i.e., system freeze--rare but can happen; putting the machine to sleep when it needs the fans to keep running; running another operating system, as you said.) It seems to me that the control for such a thing would come from the ROM or from firmware. It just seems to be a bad design to make the funtionality of the fans dependent on the operating system itself. If I understand these things, control for hardware components is usually a part of the function of firmware. I would guess that it would be perfectly fine to run Linux on G5s. In fact, given that Apple probably knows that there is a segment of their customers who do specifically that with their hardware, why would they exclude those potential sales?
I'd like to hear more about this. I don't doubt that the fans would be software controlled, but is that software specifically part of the operating system? I don't have to think for long to come up with scenarios where that would be potentially disastrous (i.e., system freeze--rare but can happen; putting the machine to sleep when it needs the fans to keep running; running another operating system, as you said.) It seems to me that the control for such a thing would come from the ROM or from firmware. It just seems to be a bad design to make the funtionality of the fans dependent on the operating system itself. If I understand these things, control for hardware components is usually a part of the function of firmware. I would guess that it would be perfectly fine to run Linux on G5s. In fact, given that Apple probably knows that there is a segment of their customers who do specifically that with their hardware, why would they exclude those potential sales?
Re: How fast?
Actually, they need it to figure out how to beat Miami...
Originally posted by sachmo
How long do you think it would take Word to launch on this cluster?
No seriously, VT needs it right away to fix Michael Vick's leg, genetic engineering!
Actually, they need it to figure out how to beat Miami...
Re: Re: G5 Fans
Lets not forget the YellowDog folks have an Apple OEM agreement in place for repackaging the G5s.....I'm sure its a microcontroller in the chipset that has its own ROM, and manages it on its own... the only place the OS comes in is fine-tuning it, by letting the microcontroller know that hey, the OS thinks different, slow down the fans.
Lets not forget the YellowDog folks have an Apple OEM agreement in place for repackaging the G5s.....I'm sure its a microcontroller in the chipset that has its own ROM, and manages it on its own... the only place the OS comes in is fine-tuning it, by letting the microcontroller know that hey, the OS thinks different, slow down the fans.