100 Teraflop Cray to Use Opterons

ackthpt writes "Code named Red Storm, Cray and Sandia National Laboratories (US Dept. of Energy) to build a 100 Teraflop super computer employing AMD's Opteron (Hammer) processors. Alluded to in the WSJ (non-free-as-in-beer subscription required), also in Infoworld, and Reuters."

Captain Opteron

[JPelorat]

There's something comic-bookish about that name... maybe it's just cos it sounds like a Transformer.

Wow!

[daeley]

Dang! Just imagine a Beow--

Ah, never mind.

(Shuffle, shuffle.)

Cool.. but

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it will be as fast as the computer William Shatner and Priceline.com use?

Just imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

...building a supercomputer as a cluster of commodity off-the-shelf personal computers, interconnected with a local area network technology like Ethernet, and running programs written for parallel processing out of those!

hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if those are PR ratings that they're throwing out!

If the Opteron's anything like my T-bird, that supercomputer's going to melt a hole to the center of the earth a la Chernobyl.

Re:The mighty have fallen

[ackthpt]

Relax, they could always overclock them and use liquid nitrogen cooling. ;-)

You can't imagine how this deal has to leave Intel smarting.

Re:Captain Opteron

[TrekCycling]

Megatron: Opterons merge to form Crayaking!

Oh well. Code named red storm..?

[ketamine-bp]

from the infoworld report:
The machine, code-named Red Storm, will require over 16,000 microprocessors to achieve that performance level, according to a researcher quoted in the Journal report.

This can be rephrased easily into
The machine, named code-red Storm, will require over 16,000 microprocessors' performance level to archive that, according to a researcher quoted in the Journal report.

oh well.

Calculon

[csb]

Once again, AMD missed their chance. They should have named the K8 after the male lead on the robot soap-opera that Bender watches on Futurama:

"Calculon! We thought you were dead!"

Re:Captain Opteron

[merz]

The Amdbots vs. The Intelicons. I like it.

Re:Heating issues?

[stratjakt]

I'd imagine some sort of phase-change system (same as an air conditioning unit uses).

For 90 mill, I doubt you'd see a bay bus with a bunch of Delta 80mm fans..

Re:Oh well. Code named red storm..?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

"code-red Storm"

Is it going to be running an unpatched version of Windows on an OC-48 line?

/me cringes in horror

Not only the fastest, but also the hottest

[asscroft]

computer on earth!!

1. cluster lots of opterons
2. place popcorn on top
3. sell popcorn and cycles
4. profit

I'd like a beowulf cluster of those...

does it play quake?

yeah, but how much longer before it is DRM-enabled to run only MS....

etc..

Re:next generation == last generation

[Anonymous Coward]

A $254 million loss in a quarter is not very convincing

Find me a US company that didn't lose money last quarter. And anybody who uses Arthur Anderson doesn't count.

Units nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the expression "100 teraflop" contains no time related unit, it probably refers to the total number of flop that will be delivered by the system running at 40 teraflop/s before its predicted meltdown after 2.5 s.

Free-as-in-Beer

[42]

I have seen the expression "Free-as-in-Beer" a few times on Slashdot, yet I have no idea what this means. I have scoured my head to think of what it could mean, but can't figure it out.

What does "Free-as-in-Beer" mean?

Free beer, to me, would seem to be the greatest thing in the history of the world!

Re:Might want to check out what Cray and Sandia

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you have bought into the OP myth. This new system, using AMD processors, is the EQUIVALENT of 100 teraflops.

Buy a case...

[scrod98]

and come over to my house, and I will demonstrate.

Re:The mighty have fallen

[dubiousmike]

This sort of thing must just be braking all the classic Crayons hearts.

Especially those which got phased out in the age of political correctness like indian Red and Prussian Blue. [enquirer.com]

Never thought I'd ever be linking to the Enquirer. I feel dirty.

gotta move now

[imsirovic5]

I hope they are not putting that supercomputer anywhere near Antarctica.. 16,000 Athlons can get pretty hot resulting in some serious polar melting forcing me to evacuate from New Orleans (we are already underwater).

Re:Captain Opteron

[Anonvmous Coward]

"what if the transformers was based on real events...and where does linux end up in this scheme."

The Constructicons were probably the Linux bots. They were small parts a of a giant robot called Devastator that was very good at the task at hand. (usually de-construction.) Devastator also had a limited vocabulary so he wasn't the most social. Few Decepticons knew how to give him the right commands to get him to do what he wanted.

Re:Just imagine...

[slyfox]

Seymour Cray said it best: "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"

Re:Just imagine...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"...or 1024 chickens"

Wouldn't that be pigeons [google.com]?

Re:Heating issues?

[BasharTeg]

I'm just waiting for Tom's Hardware to do a video with one of these supercomputers in the event of "total cooling failure." Of course, total cooling failure would mean something like the cooling system springs a leak, all the cooling liquid runs out on the floor, the copper cooling panels "fall off" (just like those damned heatsinks are always doing), the laws of thermodynamics are modified by God, and Q decides to change the gravitational constant of the universe bringing the earth unusually close to the sun. This all will likely cause the Opteron CPUs to smoke and burn out, giving Tom an opportunity to point out that if the Pentium 4 were used, it would just slow down to 10 frames per second when playing Quake 3.

Doh! Gotta end this post, the damned heatsink just fell off my Athlon again. Those wacky fucking heatsinks always jumping off.

Re:Heating issues?

[delus10n0]

Yeah, my heatsink just commited suicide too!

Apparently gripping onto all three tabs on each side of the socket just isn't enough!

We need to devise a solution where the heatsink and CPU are permanantly joined! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Just don't hit the heatsink, or you'll rip the die clean off the board.