Originally posted by AidenShaw
And consider that there are also Intel 1U servers with dual 3.06GHz Xeons, as well as dual 64-bit Opteron 1U systems. I recently got sixteen of the HP ProLiant DL360 g3 systems - dual 3.06GHz, 4 GiB of RAM (supports 8 GiB), dual GigE NICs, hardware RAID, ... (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl360/index.html)
There's plenty of reason for a G5 - some people want fast 1U systems that hold a lot of memory!
Just a side note for others, the configuration AidenShaw is talking about would run about $7000 per machine
without OS. vs. a PowerMac G5 it would have a faster sustained disk throughput (15k rpm vs 7.2k (though you can buy 10k rpm SATA for around $200)) though smaller hard drive, less memory and front side bandwidth (1Ghz PTP vs 533Mhz (shared?)), and worse graphics (not that this matters at all) + the usual dual 3.06 P4 Xeon vs. 2x2 Mac comparison. Though the RAM is upgradeable to 8 GBs, that is with 2GB DIMM boards. I would hazard a guess, with those boards, the Mac would be upgradeable to 16GB (or upgradeable to 4 or 8GB at a fraction of the price). The cost of the OS, if it isn't Linux, would also be significant.
You could buy a base system from HP (or IBM
x335 or
Opteron) and then go to other vendors to beef it up, and save a bundle. Of course, then you might as well buy from
RackSaver.
(I'll mention here that the HP probably has some memory correction like ECC or ChipKill (I couldn't check their site to figure out which), while the PowerMac and XServe do not. I wonder how VirginiaTech will get around this issue: 1000 machines with probably 4GB RAM = very high likelihood of a memory error!)
Which is a long way of saying that this isn't AidenShaw's point at all. His point is that there is a need for powerful dense (and
ultradense) rack servers. Sure, if all you are doing is serving static web pages and running an FTP site, P3 class machines are more than powerful enough, but that doesn't mean there isn't a demand for a G5 XServe. Heck, stick a scripting enterprise web application in there (PHP, ASP.NET, Java) and you'll need the cycles and the RAM.
Not that we have to wait for Apple. If we're willing to forgo Mac OS X Server, we can wait only as long as Q1 2004 for a 970 IBM blade for their BladeCenter (and probably 1U rackmounts). Who knows, perhaps I'll get one to stick in our BladeCenter at work just to benchmark. *shrug*.
Oh yeah, besides VirginiaTech, there are a number (3) Opteron machines shooting for the top 10. Particularly relevant to the discussion at hand is
the JAIST 1058 node cluster being built by IBM since the eServer 325 is reasonably priced at over $3000 (well, if you remember to price the second CPU and RAM (it has 6 bays I believe) then it will run closer to $7000) and thus would cost on the same order as the PowerMac G5 cluster with similar performance. I believe Cray is building a Opteron cluster that might give ASCIPurple a run for its money (no idea on the cost, though).
Also I noticed in that discussion, the $3 million estimate was based on the price of the machines only. We forgot to include the power costs, rack mounts, and the Infiband networking--the last of which alone adds millions to the price. Still it's a pretty good deal and I think future supercomputers will be built this way: as renderfarms for special effects and animation already do.
Finally, in the top100 list the cluster would appear as "Apple" as the vendor, not IBM. If you look down the list, you'll notice a few Itanium and P4 Xeon clusters (actually, you only have to look down to #3), yet they are listed with "HP" or "IBM" (etc) as the vendor.
Take care,
terry
Do the math...
