A New Concept in Supercomputers

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

Bad Childish Design

[Iskender]

If this is good design, then I do *not* want to see bad.

Supercomputers?

[unixcrab]

Surely the definition of a 'supercomputer' changes constantly? Everything else is measured relative to the most powerful one of the day. there can be no such thing as a 'supercomputer under your desk' because relative to the most powerful, it's actually pretty weak.

No thanks.

[jschen]

I don't need the very best computer, but if I needed/wanted the best, cost be damned...

That's hardly something that would fit under my desk. And there's no discussion of performance specs, just a bunch of hype. Besides, with serviceability taking a back seat, you won't be able to upgrade the thing readily, probably making it at the top of its game only for a few months.

It'd be nice..

[arpad1]

..if there were some performance figures. I don't give that much of a damn how it looks if it runs like a son of a gun.

I like simple.

[Nitemare14]

I'll stick with my simple and basic looking P180. It can be just as super as this toy with the same hardware, and it doesn't look like a crazy plastic turd.

Not by any means a 'supercomputer'

[Junta]

This is a high-end dual socket box that incorporates cooling that is probably quieter than equivalent air cooling. It has nothing to do with the visions of 'supercomputer' and the word supercomputer itself is always a relative term. In 1993, the top supercomputer had 60 gigaflops, with a theoretical of 131 gigaflops. This system has a theoretical of 102 gigaflops and probably can get 80-85 gigaflops measured, so it would manage to beat the number 1 supercomputer of 15 years ago.

Nowadays, the most recent list has the #500 supercomputer at nearly 6 teraflops (rpeak of 10 teraflops). Or, to quantify, the lowest of the top 500 is still 100 times more powerful than one of these boxes.

Supercomputer in your palm, supercomputer in the desk, as long as you get to pick the year by which you declare what a 'supercomputer' is, you can declare whatever you want.

What has happened to /.?

[DAldredge]

FTA :"A further six months were spent on manufacturing a working prototype. The system was initially slated to use Intel's maligned V8 platform, but was later changed to the current Skulltrail - incorporating two quad-core CPUs natively running at 3.2GHz on a motherboard that supported four graphics cards - when the design became available.: Since when is that a modern supercomputer?

That's Just a Casemodded PC, Not a Supercomputer

[Doc Ruby]

That's not a supercomputer at all. It's just a casemodded,liquid cooled, 2-x86 CPU PC with 4 graphics cards:

The system was initially slated to use Intel's maligned V8 platform, but was later changed to the current Skulltrail - incorporating two quad-core CPUs natively running at 3.2GHz on a motherboard that supported four graphics cards - when the design became available.

The only thing any supercomputer has to do with that machine is that the vendor's tech director bought an old Cray:

A little-known fact is that Armari's technical director, Dan Goldsmith, being the eccentric chap he is, bought a decommissioned Cray supercomputer - used in the Cold War - a while back. Cray's extra-large computers (by today's standards) required some serious cooling, as you would expect, and Cray engineered some class-leading liquid cooling to keep the voluminous beast operating within tolerances.

Dan has used the inspiration from Cray's research, and indeed the coolant itself, which works in a temperature-range of -110C through to 90C, as a base for the XCP (eXtreme Concept Prototype) - the total immersion model.

I bet my P4/4.3GHz non-super computer is faster than that old Cray. And there's no way a single 2*4*x86+4*GPU PC is a supercomputer [top500.org] at all.

And that case is hella ugly.

Re:Not by any means a 'supercomputer'

[dissy]

Supercomputer in your palm, supercomputer in the desk, as long as you get to pick the year by which you declare what a 'supercomputer' is, you can declare whatever you want.

This thing isn;t even a supercomputer of 15 years ago.

One of the staples of being a supercomputer (same with mainframes) is their high availability.

Will this system let you swap out CPUs or RAM while running? How bout all of the rest of the hardware?
Can you perform a two or more stage swap over and upgrade the -entire- base of hardware, so that the applications on the OS don't even realize it happened, essentially replacing the entire system live?
Can it detect bad/failed CPUs or newly added CPUs with design flaws, kick them out of the to-use list, and have the apps underneath chug along on their marry way with no ill effects? Bad RAM? Bad bus controller chips zapped by static?

If not, then it is no where near a supercomputer, nor even reaching a mainframe level.
This is, at best, a high end desktop/server, and at worst, just a regular computer, for any year.

The mark of high availability is, as long as you feed the system with power, and replace failed parts, you should be able to replace any/all failed parts with the system running, the apps will never know, and the OS will not act any differently when this happens (outside of the guts of it, having to manage said changes transparently, and probably notifying someone that it found bad hardware and needs it replaced)

Re:Bad Childish Design

[kaytodaizzik]

When the state-of-the-art in aftermarket case design is neon glow and case windows, can we really expect more that this from a system integrator? I'm of the opinion (to be taken with a grain of salt) they should have made it silver and glass with smooth curves, like a circa-1960s flying saucer. At least that way having the guts exposed would be cute, instead of garish.