Linux And Los Lobos Supercomputer 89
DocRea writes: "Using Linux, IBM and the University of New Mexico will connect 256 two-processor IBM Intel-based servers with high-speed Myrinet cards to
create a 512-processor machine capable of 375 billion calculations
per second. The computer, called Los Lobos, will primarily be used
for scientific purposes, but will be adapted by IBM to provide the
"cluster" approach to running software for business tasks and e-
commerce. "
don't need SMP to cluster... (Score:1)
For that matter you can chain anything to anything else with Ethernet and MPI (e.g. LAM or MPICH implementation). I guess for Myrinet (=Gbit-Ethernet) you'd need PCI slots though, I'm not really familiar with that.
SMP saves
1) space (+ HW costs)
2) if you do it right (as in interweaving OpenMP and MPI, quite messy) it saves you latency and gets more bandwidth on communication between nodes. Nothing (as of now) beats the Cray communication technology, certainly not anything having to take the path MEM-> BUS -> PCI -> CABLE (including handshaking) -> PCI -> BUS -> MEM.
But notice, if you don't need heavy communication, clusters (w./ Ethernet) are fine, such as the NASA computational gravity stuff and cryptocracking e.g.. Other apps, like Lattice QCD (very communication intensive) will have to wait longer, until they get anything comparable to a Cray.
As for the def of SC: I don't know it, but the definition will be exactly where it matters (as you said): in the law. Anything else is just words, words, words.
cheers,
Roland
If you wanna build a cluster... (Score:1)
This looks like it's cheap enough for the house... And who doesn't wanna run fiber in their house???
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:1)
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:1)
Re:Moderators still on drugs (Score:1)
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:1)
Re:IRIX *is* unscalable and insecure (Score:1)
Not scalable? Look at their ccNUMA and CrayLink stuff. Need I say more? Sorry, but your Linux box cannot touch SGI's clustering ability. Maybe in a year or two but not right now.
Not secure? Again, rubbish. IRIX did have some security problems in the past related to its suid root GUI system administration tools. The simple fix was to not install them. As for newer versions of IRIX, they'll blow the average RedHat box away in terms of security. Go to securityfocus.com and count the exploits for yourself.
IRIX is not stable? I recently left Ticketmaster Online - CitySearch, where we were ran two large datacenters full of Sun, SGI, and VA Linux systems. I don't think there was a sysadmin among us who would say that our SGI Origin200 servers were not the most stable of the bunch. They've been up for hundreds of days, sending out many gigabytes of web content and running high-traffic Oracle databases.
Stop being a drone and following your penguin-obsessed friends. Do some comparison shopping and I don't mean read the latest
Hmm (Score:1)
Re:Where's AMD? (Score:1)
(Yes, you can get chips from there.)
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:1)
Actually, there's a checkbox for "No Score +1 Bonus" right above the Submit button. Watch, I'll do it right now...
Different story? (Score:1)
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In addition to the other 2 posts so far... (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos? (Score:1)
but everything else they've ever done sucks.
I'd like to see your list of everyting else, unless (and this is my guess) those are the only songs you've ever heard.
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Re:Los Lobos? (Score:1)
Hidong
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:1)
Re:AMD's are SMP friendly, but not the board chips (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos? (Score:1)
Kernel 0.9 on an i386-washedup
login:
Actually, believe it or not, I say Los Lobos last summer. They were pretty good. The did a big jam session that was pretty cool.
Already posted, Dave (Score:1)
Too late already posted on March 22
Re: Who's Dave? (Score:1)
Another Anonymous Coward mentioned that aswell, too bad you guys don't have the guts to put a name to your useless posts.
Like I told him, maybe the movie was not realistic, but if you have ever read the book, you'd know that the quote makes sense.
Re: Who's Dave? (Score:1)
Re:More proof, Linux scalable, SOLARIS/IRIX/AIX NO (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos? (sensible name) (Score:1)
Besides that, it's also UNM's mascot.
not only that... (Score:1)
So it's a repeat of that earlier article, and a late one at that!
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Second rate? (Score:1)
This was posted yeterday on slashdot! (Score:1)
Check the University of New Mexico press release [unm.edu].
Re:LOS LOBOS BORE MY GRITS (Score:1)
WHat, no anesthetics? Dammnit man, just get a boxer in here! This man needs a Gritectomy, pronto!
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Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
you don't get it (Score:1)
Re:Remember Short Circuit?!?!?! (Score:1)
"I dunno, man, eet's a... a Meetsubishi!"
"Am not Mitsubishi! Am Johnny Five!"
"Collecting mucho input! Urban input!"
Los Lobos was the name of a Latin band from the eighties; they are responsible for reviving "La Bamba".
Re:Los Lobos? (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1)
You can't underestimate stupidity.
Another usage of Beowulf (Score:1)
Re:Top 500 (Score:1)
Re:Already posted, Dave (Score:1)
Wouldn't it be great... (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos? (Score:1)
Re:Wouldn't it be great... (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos es Loco! (Score:1)
Re:Los Lobos es Loco! (Score:1)
Here's why (Score:2)
But the band was the first thing I thought of too and I live here.
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:2)
Re:Where's AMD? (Score:2)
It's amusing to note that Macintosh touted it's G4 multi-processor workstations as violating export restrictions by being considered a 'super-computer'. But it just goes to show how out of date US export law is. Besides, what's to prevent someone from buying a 250 port switch from Cisco, 250 workstations from IBM, and then shipping them seperately and downloading the Beowulf software seperately?
Export restrictions aren't very restrictive, taken in that light. National security most certainly isn't being enhanced any...
Re:Top 500 (Score:2)
You would've found the answer to your question had you bothered to actually read the front page:
Figuring out why this particular system isn't on the list is left as an exercise to the reader.
AMD's are SMP friendly, but not the board chipsets (Score:2)
With AMD's recent growth and giving Intel a run for its money on releasing faster CPUs, we may see that change.
Oh, and a Beowulf is clustered, so doesn't care what manufacturer makes the CPUs, it can even mix them. It's tightly coupled SMP machines that care.
Re:Read this you FUD spreadin %&?#%.... (Score:2)
Re:Hurrying to post this.... (Score:2)
<anti-karma bait>I'm far enough over that I'd have to do some serious ninja pancake runs, Trolling for Scooby Doo, or M$ advocacy to get back under 25 (though I'm certainly nowhere near the levels of some of the famous posters here)... so I'll post this at +1 and take my chances</anti-karma bait>
Re:Already posted, Dave (Score:2)
I can see posting "IBM to announce (newfangled technology) whis year" then a month or three later "IBM released (newfangled technology)". But two days of the same announcement is a little tough...
Re:Different story?... nope.... (Score:2)
Re: if it were, they could BeoWulf 'em (Score:2)
Oh well, just thought I'd mention thought before this thread gets wiped.
Re:Where's AMD? (Score:2)
Ah yes, the practical difference between a Beowulf and a supercomputer! Dig in your pocket and pull out some coins. Nickels are commodity clusters, pennies are SGI boxes and dimes are Cray. They are a collection of the same thing, namely coins/supercomputers. But what differentiates a cluster from a Cray? The intended purpose of the components. All the bits of a T3E were designed for it. In a cluster, the parts were designed for (and in most cases are) low cost workstations, hack rigged in software to run as one monster machine.
On what grounds ? (Score:2)
Stop trolling. Linux isn't touching solaris in the data center market. It doesn't touch it in the scalability department, and the x86 hardware to run it isn't there even if it could.
If Linux is just killing Sun then why can't they stop making money hand over fist ? The fact of the matter is that Linux scalability plain sucks, and the answer has been "we're working on that" for at least 2 years. It _is_ getting better, but it is simply not up to par with OSes designed explicitly to handle the massive multi-cpu systems made by their vendors.
Finally, "Beowulf != Scalable". Last time i looked into it, beowulf was originally very much like an MPP and had made some inroads to providing functionality of single-image computing. The applications of linux's "clustering" are still quite narrow, and chances are most people that say they want beowulf clusters don't have any clue what they'd do with them.
Scalability for most people is something different. "Hey, i've got this webserver and RDBMS that are both thread-aware and thus can benefit from SMP machines..I'll just add more CPUs and RAM to this giant box and they'll automagically get better". Linux is an extremely poor choice for that scenario. The kernel locking is still much too coarse, too many sections are still non-reentrant, and the SMP hardware linux supports isn't particuarly scalable anyhow. Linux is _so_ poor a choice for true SMP computing that that was the area that made those amusing Mindcraft comparisions between Linux and NT realistic (i.e. NOT falsified). If you bother to look, the comparisons were using Multiple CPU boxes with Multiple Network cards. It shouldn't surprise anyone that NT did much better here, as at that time (and perhaps even still today) the linux IP stack was not re-entrant. The test took advantage of the fact that NT handled multiple device instances and SMP extremely well and Linux handled it extremely poorly. NT was designed for SMP from the ground up, with linux its been a progressive hack.
People who disagree are more then welcome to come up with facts---NOT trolls, to support their arguments. Postings which make unsubstantiated claims and predictions are basically useless.
Re:IRIX *is* unscalable and insecure (Score:2)
Linux is the true industry leader in regards to scalability and security
Linux is neither. UNIX like systems are arguably a poor choice for a secure operating system since they are so damn intent on providing service and flexibility. However, even amongst UNIXes Linux is no where _close_ to being the security leader. Try OpenBSD [openbsd.org]. Any mention of "security" that doesn't also include "openBSD is pretty much the most secure UNIX flavor in wide use" is at best unenlightened.
as far as scalability, see my earlier post. Linux does _not_ lead in scalability because of its poor SMP supprt and the poor scalability of the SMP hardware it can run on.
Finally, IRIX machines can and do stay up for long periods of time, and there are frankly a hell of alot more mission-critical multi-CPU irix machines than there are _total_ multi-cpu linux boxes.
Where's AMD? (Score:2)
Read this you FUD spreadin %&€#%.... (Score:2)
A midrange machine with up to 30 processorss h.990929.1.html
http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/e6500/
This is what it does when clustered.
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/9909/sunfla
A machine with up to 64 processorsf lash.20000114.1.html
http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/10000/
What is it good for?
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2000-01/sun
SUN and clusters? http://www.sun.com/clusters/
And remeber... If you keep FUDin' around the SUN will never shine on you... ;-F
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
- Where's my karma?
- On the parking lot son!
Hmmm... (Score:2)
A provider of linux supercomputing (Score:2)
Los Lobos? (Score:3)
As long as the computer plays that cool guitar intro from Desperado when it boots, I guess it's okay.
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Re:Wouldn't it be great... (Score:3)
Re:Wouldn't it be great... (Score:3)
Re:Wouldn't it be great... (Score:3)
check it out at mosix.org. [mosix.org] it is especially useful for compiling large projects (i.e. xfree86).
jon
One more time... (Score:4)
Re:Where's AMD? (Score:5)
first Athlon cluster at SC99 in November 1999.
Although we have used SMPs as well (e.g., PIII
quads from Dell), modern processors are memory
bandwidth starved, and simple SMPs magnify the
problem. I think a lot of cluster designs try to use SMP nodes to compensate for overspending on the inter-node network. I prefer to do the network carefully and use uniprocessor nodes.
PS: I'm the author of the Parallel processing HOWTO and my first Linux PC cluster predates
Beowulf (it was in Feb. 1994)... being good
and even being first doesn't necessarily give
you the highest visibility. Remember that when
you think of AMD's Athlon.
PPS: I used to be faculty at Purdue, but have
recently moved to the University of Kentucky.
Our new web site is http://aggregate.org/