Linux Claims 4 of the Top 5 Supercomputer Spots 253
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that the November 2005 list of supercomputers has been published. Certainly something to note is that four of the top five use linux. Relatedly Multiflow writes "CNET is reporting that the number of supercomputers on the Top500 list which use Intel Itanium 2 microprocessors has fallen by almost 50% in the past year. While new higher performance Itanium chips are in the pipeline, the article reports that 64 bit Xeons and Opterons have increased their representation on Top500."
niche market? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:niche market? (Score:2, Funny)
(Hint to the OSS-monkeys: the answer is not "Of course; it has at least 157 different window managers and 476 different toolkits, each prettier than the other, so it must be ready!!!1!!")
Re:niche market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:niche market? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're obviously too young to remember the OS wars... C64, IMB-compatible, Apple (Mac), Amiga, etc. It used to be a real nightmare to buy and even more of a pain to develop software. As someone who was a geek during those days, I can say that things in the world of PC's are MUCH better today than they were when we actually had a lot of OS competition.
Re:niche market? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, user share only matters (for us) to the extent that we do not want to be excluded from doing something simply because we haven't enough users to be relevant. The actual number doesn't matter, only the effect that number has on consideration of our OS as a "first-class citizen".
Re:niche market? (Score:2, Insightful)
And interestingly enough, two of those platforms could run UNIX...
Re:niche market? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, this is not the "OS wars" so much as the machine wars - these are all different machines, even if they do use different OSes - the only reason they have different OSes is because their OSes were written specifically with that machine in mind. This is no different today - you still can't run MS Windows on a Mac.
Second of all, each of these OSes had their own strengths and weaknesses, right?
And third of all, as long as they follow standards, there'd be no problem. I have yet to hear anyone say that they have trouble switching between Opera and Firefox. In fact many of the problems we have with computers today such as vendor lock-in and version incompatibilities are partially due to *certain companies* (AKA MS) not following standards.
Re:niche market? (Score:2)
Re:Oh but they are (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one extreme is people who don't give a rat's ass if other people use it or not, or at least say this. On the other extreme is people who want global domination.
The problem with the first extreme is that for the whole open-source concept to work, you have to have a critical mass of users so that you have a large enough base of developers (which are a subset of the users) to keep the project working. Since most open-source software isn't owned by corporations (though some is certainly supported to some extent by them), open-source requires a large number of users to help work on the various projects.
The problem with the other extreme is that, in order to make Linux (as a group of distributions) a viable choice for all current Windows users, certain concessions and changes might have to be made, such as providing an API for closed-source drivers, removing features from the most popular software because it's "too flexible" for many users, standardizing on one desktop (GNOME or KDE), etc. Many powerful people in the open-source community don't like these things, and it's quite debatable whether they might end up hurting or destroying the open-source movement instead of helping it. (For instance, if it became easy to distribute closed-source drivers, then while Linux might become more popular initially, it might suffer from the same problem as Windows where companies release crappy drivers for their hardware, which makes Linux systems unreliable, and the companies refuse to help any open-source driver efforts).
Personally, I don't want Linux to become a commercialized, closed-source OS with a few open-source bits, but all the important stuff closed as some companies are trying to do. I also don't care if "Aunt Tillie" uses it, as long as she doesn't ask me for free support for her Windows computer, so I don't really care about it becoming the dominant OS. What I do want is for it to gain enough marketshare so that it's taken seriously, most hardware is supported on it (by open-source drivers), most worthwhile application software is ported to it, and that there's enough business in it that the dominant distros can make very polished versions without any major shortcomings like we still see today. In a nutshell, I want to be able to use Linux at work and at home to do anything I need to do (including buying and using the latest TurboTax or AutoCAD, for instance), without ever running into any major problems because I don't use Windows. If Linux reached 50% marketshare, this dream would probably be realized. The Windows users could happily live with their BSODs, activations, client-access licenses, high license prices, etc., and me and the other Linux users could happily ignore all that crap without being hindered because some web site is "optimized" for IE, TurboTax doesn't have a Linux version, ATI cards have crap drivers for Linux, etc.
Already, we're getting fairly close: certain types of hardware still have serious driver problems (video cards and WLAN adaptors), most lower-end commercial software does not have a Linux version (although much high-end software, such as that by MentorGraphics, Cadence, etc., does), and we still have serious problems with non-HTML-compliant websites. But on the plus side, we have a very reliable kernel and OS, we have very functional desktop environments (GNOME and KDE, and apps from one will work in the other), we have tons of free software to satisfy most of your needs both on the server and the desktop, and we have tons of drivers for most popular and also much older and obscure hardware. We're at the point now where you can get a recent Linux distro and install it, easily and quickly, on the hardware of your choice, and probably not run into any problems at all. You'll get tons of included software (web browsers, CD burners, word processors, etc.), and be able to do just about anything you reasonably need to do with a computer, unless perhaps your raison d'etre is to play all the latest 3D PC games.
Re:Oh but they are (Score:3, Interesting)
However you can't dismiss the evangilists for Linux if for no other reason than that they work hard to be the voice for Linux most people hear and to push their viewpoint. Notice that my orignal post got modded offtopic and flamebait. It's in no w
Re:Oh but they are (Score:2)
Agreed. But also ask yourself: "Of the people using Microsoft, what percentage got an 'A' in Operating Systems?" It is a two edged sword, you see. While Linux is seeing some adoption, it is still primarily used on servers, and by geeks who either run those servers or whose "other computer" is made by someone who made 64bit CPUs whe
Re:Oh but they are (Score:2)
But some other people are saying that this must be done to increase Linux's popularity among non-programmers, so I just hope that they're wrong. Unfortunately, as far as GNOME goes, it seems that it's somehow getting more uptake by the large distros than KDE, and it seems to go for the "less features" philosophy.
Re:Oh but they are (Score:2)
Re:Oh but they are (Score:2)
Re:niche market? (Score:2)
Re:niche market? (Score:2, Interesting)
I had to move an old RH6.2 box to WinXP just a couple weeks ago. (/usr was missing - so after the last power outage, it wouldn't come back up, and the wife wanted a windows box in the house.) Oh, man, what a pain. I had less trouble getting Gentoo up and running on a fresh box! (Admittedly, the XP install took less time than Gentoo, but I watched a movie while waiting for Gentoo to finish compiling the core, and had a couple days to do other things while X/KDE compiled.)
First, the box couldn't boot off
Re:niche market? (Score:2, Funny)
you need some persistence at first, but once you get good at finding howtos and following directions it gets easier.
well duh (Score:5, Funny)
What else would you expect them to run, windows ME?
Linux for SuperComputers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux for SuperComputers! (Score:2)
Re:well duh (Score:4, Informative)
HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, SCO UNIX, Mac OS X, free/open/netBSD...? Palm OS?
Re:well duh (Score:3, Insightful)
It's AIX.
Re:well duh (Score:2)
One migth think that Microsoft would pursue a position among the top 100. After all, they have a clustering solution, dont they?
Re:well duh (Score:2)
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (Score:3, Funny)
Less duh, more history (Score:5, Informative)
I was working at SGI in 1999 when they made their Itanium/Linux move. A lot of customers (and employees for that matter) would have liked SGI to port its version of Unix, Irix, to the Itanium. But that was just too expensive. Instead, SGI promised to continue selling the MIPS/Irix Origin line, in addition to the Linux/Itanium Altix line. So Irix is still alive — as a legacy system. If you check the Top 500 list you'll find several Altix systems but not a single Origin system.
Re:well duh (Score:2)
Re:well duh (Score:2)
That's pretty subjective. If you're talking about "the Linux kernel" then while it was originally designed to just be a monolithic unix kernel clone for x86 machines, over the recent years, big boys like IBM have made some significant contributions to the source tree to make Linux an effective kernel on big iron.
If you're talking about Linux as in "GNU Userland" there's no reason it can't be run on big iron. You can probably build quite a lot of the GNU util
Re:well duh (Score:2)
Re:well duh (Score:2)
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/c4d983f435b90444
Hooray for Linux! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hooray for Linux! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hooray for Linux! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it doesn't show that at all. Supercomputing is a very specialised niche use of hardware. Generally, this sort of software wants the operating system to get out of the way as much as possible and allow the fastest possible access to memory and processors and (depending on the situation) I/O systems. In the past major supercomputer applications have required very little operating system functionality to back them up.
There is little comparison between specialised numerical supercomputing and general multi-processor mainframe use, which requires concurrent multiuser access to app servers, general filesystems, databases etc. This is where older OSes such as IBM operating systems and Solaris work very well, and where Linux is now making inroads.
It is rather like comparing a formula one racing car to a truck. I agree that Linux is suited to both purposes, but working well in one environment does not indicate usefulness in another.
Re:Hooray for Linux! (Score:2)
Come to think of it, what most apps want is a souped up BIOS with some smarts and a filesystem.
-nB
Itanic, we hardly knew ye (Score:3, Insightful)
Itanium already has no popularity whatsoever. If it can't even be successful in the supercomputer market, it can't succeed anywhere (last I looked, itanium had truly awe-inspiring FP but was slow at everything else.)
MY HEART WILL GO ONNNNNNNN!
Source? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Source? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Source? (Score:2)
yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:3, Interesting)
With windows licenes costing about $300 for a couple of processors
With the total cost it would be more powerful to get linux and spend the left over increasing its performance.
Re:yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:2)
Re:yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, it is, and that's all this shows.
Re:yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:2)
Re:yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:yeah well would you want to pay for m$ (Score:2)
Please point me to the papers showing better scaling for SMP and NUMA in FreeBSD when compared to Linux 2.6
One Supercomputer? (Score:2, Interesting)
(The top 6 are all from the US - followed by Japan and Europe.)
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:2)
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:2)
The big difference is that the types of multiprocessing you can typically achieve with MPI on a tight-knit cluster is different than what you can achieve with a loose-knit cluster like seti@home. Seti@home, in terms of clusters, has very low bandwidth between nodes, and a very high interconnect latency, making certain tasks infeasibly slow on such a layout. Contrasted against a distributed setup like Set@home, the current gen of Top500 linux clusters tend to have very high bandwidth and very low latency b
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:2)
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:2)
You dont need more than a few 100k Of computer equipment to get into the top500 list.
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most people consider a computer to be something that, at some level, runs a single operating system (which then can abstract other OSes on top of itself), or perhaps is capable of addressing a single logical range of main memory (although this might not be a good definition either).
I haven't read the article yet to see if they give their definition, but it does seem as if the line between 'this is a computer' and 'this is a bunch of computers working together' is fairly blurry, and perhaps where one draws it is completely arbitrary.
Re:One Supercomputer? (Score:2)
For example, Seti at home _could_ qualify as a supercomputer... But it would HORRIBLY suck at 99.999% of all problems because of limited node to node bandwith and latency.
linux? Not exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
Where, exactly, did you get the information that these systems "run linux?"
In the Blue/Gene system, for example, the user front-end nodes use linux, but the OS for the system itself is very definitely NOT linux. So acting as if the system runs off a linux kernel is misleading, to say the very least!
Re:linux? Not exactly. (Score:2)
Re:linux? Not exactly. (Score:2)
Re:linux? Not exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
Note that I/O nodes and not "front-end" nodes. All the front-end machines (there are many) run Linux as well.
All the user-level stuff (the programming model, tools, compilers, etc) is standard Linux, too.
So, is it Linux?
[Disclaimer: I have worked on some system aspects of the beast, but this post is not sanctioned by BG/L team or IBM or LLNL. I am not disclosing anything proprietary here - all this is open info that can be found in many papers on the subject. Check out IBM Journal of R&D [ibm.com] for a wealth of information.
Re:linux? Not exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
J. E. Moreira, G. Almási, C. Archer, R. Bellofatto, P. Bergner, J. R. Brunheroto, M. Brutman, J. G. Castaños, P. G. Crumley, M. Gupta, T. Inglett, D. Lieber, D. Limpert, P. McCarthy, M. Megerian, M. Mendell, M. Mundy, D. Reed, R. K. Sahoo, A. Sanomiya, R. Shok, B. Smith, and G. G. Stewart: Blue Gene/L programming and operating environment. [ibm.com]
Summary: It's not all Linux.
Re:linux? Not exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, here is the most relevent passage from the article:
Fastest Computers? (Score:3, Funny)
the scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
- Linux: 72.2%
- Max OS: 1.0%
- Others 4.4%
- UNIX and Linux: everything else (~22%)
So it appears that Linux/UNIX* runs on about 95% of all super computers. The Story headline should have been:
Linux Claims Almost All Supercomputers Spots
What a scoop.
*Linux,UNIX, what's the difference really?
Re:the scoop (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom. Especially if you specify capital-UNIX and not just Unix.
Re:the scoop (Score:2)
Re:the scoop (Score:2)
Re:the scoop (Score:2)
It ain't ease of use, as they can run the same software. It used to be binary format, but Linux likes ELF now.
Portability? You can run linux on most anything with a processor, but BSD has certain... requirements.
Re:the scoop (Score:2)
*NIX runs on over 95% of all supercomputers?
*yawn* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*yawn* (Score:2)
Um...that's the impressive part...
Re:*yawn* (Score:2)
So you could argue that they could slap each other with their wallets instead of building those supercomputers. But first of all it's quite impressive that some entities are willing to invest so much money into computing power. And afterall they are not doing this because it's some kind of game - they believe that they need the processing po
Yawn, part 2: (Score:2)
Oh, vector cpus are SO boring. You just put some more execution units on the cpu, add some more memory channels. Just takes die-space and board layers, thus money, not invention or innovation.
Re:*yawn* (Ahem...) (Score:5, Informative)
Even the allegedly "off the shelf" systems contain an awful lot of not off the shelf hardware. Case in point would be PNNL's Itanium cluster http://www.emsl.pnl.gov/capabs/mscf.shtml/ [pnl.gov] (at 1000 or so nodes). At SC2003 I chatted with people I know from there, and they mentioned that they had four (4) Quadrics http://www.quadrics.com/ [quadrics.com] interconnect cards Per Node, plus extra switches, in order to get the bandwidth up high enough. Even a cheap cluster will add Myrinet (at about $1500/node when the switch is factored in), and start worrying about topology after the first few dozen nodes are installed.
There are clusters (basically networks of workstations), and then there are supercomputers.
Not nearly that simple ... at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Why no Itanic (Score:4, Insightful)
-Charlie
And yet none (Score:3, Funny)
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But... (Score:3, Funny)
D'oh.
Image a Beowolf cluster...
D'oh.
In case you were wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
IBM AIX 5L [ibm.com]
Wikipedia: AIX Operating System [wikipedia.org]
There must be some mistake... (Score:2, Funny)
Try here [sco.com] instead.
I hate it when you long-haired smellies pass off false information for truth.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
The fifth supercomputer was an Amiga (Score:2, Interesting)
Go us (Score:2, Funny)
Japanese SUPER HYPER MEGA EFFICIENT ENGINEERING (Score:4, Interesting)
6) Sandia National Laboratories
United States Red Storm Cray XT3, 2.0 GHz
Cray Inc. #Processors: 10880 Year: 2005 Rmax: 36190 Rpeak: 43520
7) The Earth Simulator Center
Japan Earth-Simulator
NEC #Processors: 5120 Year: 2002 Rmax: 35860 Rpeak: 40960
Re:Japanese SUPER HYPER MEGA EFFICIENT ENGINEERING (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux Claims 4 of the Top 5 Supercomputer Spots (Score:4, Funny)
Female Linux Users Claim 4 of the Top 5 Supermodel Finalists
...and the fifth one? (Score:2, Redundant)
Reason why Linux is used (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google = the world's biggest supercomputer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google = the world's biggest supercomputer (Score:2)
they did (Score:2)
About 5 years ago, Google ran on about 8000 beige boxes. Each one had a Celeron CPU and two IDE drives.
Re:Google = the world's biggest supercomputer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Google = the world's biggest supercomputer (Score:2)
Re:I see that... (Score:3, Funny)
Apple's customers are like no others -- a rich blend of the most sociologically elite [atspace.com] with those seeking elegant [atspace.com], simple computing. ... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active [atspace.com], exploratory [atspace.com], avant-garde [atspace.com] and early adopters [atspace.com] . The activities they enjoy are unique in the the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video [atspace.com] and music [atspace.com] as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [atspace.com] [and Linux [atspace.com]] users.
Re:I see that... (Score:2)
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
I'd like to see the tech. specs for that claim.
Last I checked, the power consumption of the Pentium M was much lower than the Athlon 64.
Even with the extra chips, it's on the order of 30 watts vs. 80 watts, but a "fair" comparison isn't really possible since the M isn't a 64 bit processor.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Duh, idle Pentium-M feature a 27W TDP while A64 are all well above 60W TDP...
On the other hand, low-power Opterons and Turion64 (AMD's mobile A64s) get as low as 25W TDP.
Oh, and BTW some A64/socket939 chipsets get hot as fucks, check the running temperature of a nForce4 chip, mine currently checks 47C while my A64 3000+ runs a cool 35C (and I'm not using SLI, which makes the nF4 get even hotter)...
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Not to say that AMD64 are as low as Pentium-M, TDP is meaningless, it is the manufacturer's guide to system integrators what cooling to provide so that the CPU doesn't have to be throttled too much, but it does not say how much power the CPU uses. Turion64 ML CPUs have a TDP of 35W but measure (including chipsets - which is necessary to compare apples to apples) lower than Pentium M.
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Yeah. Intel still has to show one non-laptop (ie: servers and desktops) CPU which is not the n 1 power-hungry CPU in its class; and other companies are also (obviously) working in making their CPUs less power hungry (see: future versions of the amd cpus, the low-power PPCs), still Intel/Apple fanboys are already sure that Intel will be the best at performance per watt numbers
It's amazing what the Jobs' intel switch has b
Re:I expect to see... (Score:2)
Intel sure seems like they have shot themselves in the foot. They worked for years making sure that Intel X86 was king of the hill, then they tried to switch to Itanium, and AMD blew past them in the meantime. Intel has been still selling well just because of inertia, but it looks like the market is starting to jump over to AMD now finally.
Personally, I don't care. In fact I'd rather be using something with a sensible machine programming scheme and more grokkable arc
Re:still not ready for prime time (Score:2)