Cray Wins $52 Million Supercomputer Contract 133
The Interfacer writes "Cray and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced that Cray has won the contract to install a next-generation supercomputer at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The systems and multi-year services contract, valued at over $52 million, includes delivery of a Cray massively parallel processor supercomputer, code-named 'Hood.'"
Just anounced (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just anounced (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just anounced (Score:1)
Re:Just anounced (Score:2, Funny)
Vista will come early (Score:1, Funny)
Boss1: Cray has developed a computer that actually runs Vista fast
Boss2: I see, let's remove that "optimization" box from the gantt chart then..
Boss1: But customers will compain that they can't afford to buy a supercomputer
Boss2: What? it runs AMD! how can it be expensive....those morons
Re:Vista will come early (Score:1)
Re:Vista will come early (Score:1)
Re:Just anounced (Score:1, Troll)
And why is the DHS (which failed miserably during Katrina) more prevalent/widely-known?
Re:Just anounced (Score:1, Informative)
The part of the DOE that uses supercomputers does nuclear simulations. They don't give a crap about your unwise car choice.
Re:Just anounced (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just anounced (Score:2)
Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:2)
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:1)
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:2)
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:2)
From NSA's online museum: "Working with companies, such as Cray Research Inc., NSA has been a leader in computer development throughout its history. Some of the earliest supercomputers were designed and built for the National Security Agency."
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:2)
Yes we would (Score:2)
In fact, it was widely reported in the HPTC press that the defense department was helping to fund the development of the "Black Widow" vector supercomputer, and that they funded much of the development costs for the X1. If you search the web for a while, you'll find that the NSA is the only customer for cray's bizzare MTA3 supercomputer. Every once in a while you'll see cray press
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:1)
After all, with the massive amounts of data that the NSA has been allegedly collecting, it is obvious that they would need some serious computing juice to process it. I'm not trying to come up with some sort of conspiracy theory, but from a technical standpoint, it makes sense.
Re:Just enough for them to limp along... (Score:1)
Re:Cash Machine (Score:1, Offtopic)
Cray still in business... (Score:2)
Re:Cray still in business... (Score:1)
Brainwave - (Score:2)
um - nevermind.
Let's just hope (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Let's just hope (Score:2)
I am just surprized it wasn't KBR that got the contract [lol]
Re:Let's just hope (Score:2)
DoD/Army only get to store and use the suckers.
Pinky... (Score:3, Funny)
I think so, Brain! NERSC! POIT!
Re:Pinky... (Score:4, Funny)
I think so, Brain, but how do we get that many processors into a pair of rubber pants?
Re:Pinky... (Score:1)
shamelessplug on
In fact, I actually bought a domin from one of their catchphrases. http//www.murmp.com/ [slashdot.org] I really don't know what I am going to do with it, but I think it is catchy nonetheless. It was "Web 2.0" potential.
shamelessplug off
Any ideas for what I should do with it...this ought to be fun.
Why Cray doesnt sell (Score:5, Funny)
Because of it's power requirements, Cray's only possible customer was the Department of Energy
Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:3, Interesting)
That is why Clusters are such a powerful paradigm. If your problem needs more processors/memory/bandwidth/data access, you can design a cluster to fit your problem and only buy what your need. In the past you had to buy a large supercomputer with lots of engineering you did not need. Designing clusters is an art, but the payoff is very good price-to-performance. A good article on this topic is the Cluster Urban Legends [clustermonkey.net], which explains many of these issues.
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:1)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:1)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2, Funny)
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network."
That's a cluster.
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2)
I thnk the distinction actually is, that with CrayLink/NumaLink, there's only one OS running, and the other chassis are all controlled by t
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:3, Informative)
passing engine. its distributed memory and the OS
doesn't share any state (except for a library that
does filesystem indirection)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:1)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:1)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2)
"The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar network. "
That's a cluster. It's also a supercomputer. Maybe you're looking for the word 'Mainframe'? Regardless, the article the parent links to is a really good discussion of clusters and their v
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2)
I *have* to say it! (Score:1)
Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back. (Score:2)
Slashdot is NOT digg.com , you can't advertise referrer URL here. I think everyone should report your type to slashdot admins and they should put an end to this trivial referrer crap URLs became fashion again.
Paste some stuff from some trivia source like wiki to post something everyone will find interesting with referrer url and
XT3 not really a cluster (Score:2)
Nersc, and a number of other dod/doe labs are buying a new generation of "true" supercom
I agree! Mod me down!! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hood? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hood? (Score:3, Funny)
You only get this joke if yer from New England... (Score:5, Informative)
They had giant milk bottle ice cream stands, one stood outside the old Computer Museum on Congress St.
No slight intended concerning ethnic neighborhoods.
Re:You only get this joke if yer from New England. (Score:2)
And to be honest, a research question like that is probably even a better defined one than just looking at the protein folding problem in general, and therefore not a bad way at all to spen
Or if you're a Phish fan (Score:2)
Re:Or if you're a Phish fan (Score:2)
Re:Or if you're a Phish fan (Score:2)
Re:Hood? (Score:2)
Re:Hood? (Score:2)
Re:Hood? Hood College (Score:1)
Re:Hood? (Score:2)
SGI owns cray? (Score:1)
Even so- I doubt 52 million is enough to save SGI in the long haul- especially if anything more than a few percent goes to actual hardware/research costs (and it will).
Apparently not. (Score:4, Informative)
Even I didn't notice that happen. Apparently Tera bought Cray from SGI and changed the name back for recognition purposes.
Re:Apparently not. (Score:2)
http://news.com.com/SGI+buys+supercomputer+vendor
SGI sells Cray in 2000..
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34698,0
Re:Apparently not. (Score:1)
good to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then it was back to my PDP-11
Is this big as far as contracts go? (Score:2)
Will this thing be cooled with that cool nonconductive liquid goo stuff that it all just bathes in?
Re:Is this big as far as contracts go? (Score:2)
Brett
Re:Is this big as far as contracts go? (Score:2)
Re:Is this big as far as contracts go? (Score:3, Informative)
$52M is rather large nowadays. At least, for a 'commodity' part cluster it is. For a 'vector' supercomputer, it may be only medium sized.
You can easily break the top 50 for less than $10M. A couple thousand nodes, each with two dual-core Opteron/Xenons, InfiniBand or Myrinet (maybe 10GigE), and a compiler that optimizes better than gcc... no problem.
That being said, NERSC is a pathologically tough customer. Cray will have to work
specmarks? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:specmarks? (Score:1)
Who else bid? (Score:1)
It would be interesting to know the other bids and their performance
Re:Who else bid? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems like they had a lock on the last few big DoE supers (and supercomputer sales in general); now all of a sudden we see Cray getting back in there. I wonder if IBM stepped on somebody's toes and got given the boot on this one (it's small, maybe this is just a spanking), or if they've gotten behind in the research and power/dollar worlds because they were doing so well for so long? Or is this just the government trying to spread the love aroun
Re:Who else bid? (Score:2)
Re:Who else bid? (Score:2)
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html [inc.com]
Basically, IBM and Cray got caught by surprise when the MPPs, of which TMC was just one, came onto the market. Eventually they got their act together and put out the SP and the T3D, which were both good products. Thinking machines got hit by the same post-cold-war lull in supercomputer buying that hit everyone else, and they just weren't big enough to ride it out. Even at their peak, they w
Re:Who else bid? (Score:3, Informative)
But....... "the Hood system installed at NERSC will be among the world's fastest general-purpose systems".
Nersc are looking for general purpose computing systems to fill the needs of 2500 users. Blue gene is blindingly fast at some things, but general purpose it aint. I've benchmarked both the XT3 and Blue Gene with a set of general Scientific Codes and the opteron delivers much better general price/performance for a representati
Re:Who else bid? (Score:2)
The rest of the story (Score:1)
This is actually related to this story [slashdot.org] that ran on Slashdot a month ago. Turns out the Inquirer article that everyone ripped to shreds for being light on details was right all along. (I saw sanitized excerpts from e-mails regarding the incident, so I can tell you that Intel's Woodcrest chips performed abysmally in the DOE's testing compared to the Opterons.) The competitor that lost was IBM and the reason was because of problems with Woodcrest. The supercomputer in question will be running on 24,000 quad c
Re:The rest of the story (Score:1)
anything here, it would have been either a BlueGene, or, perhaps, something like the
ASCI machines, which are conventional PowerPCs with a fast interconnect. Hard - no - impossible -
to believe that IBM would have bid an Intel processor.
Re:The rest of the story (Score:1)
I agree that it sounds crazy. I'm just passing along the information I was given. Your impression telling you that there's no way IBM would bid an Intel chip makes a lot of sense. It's not been their standard M.O. in the past. All I know is that Cray won the bid with Opterons, the e-mails I read gave unfavorable reviews of Woodcrest chips, and that Woodcrest is supposed to kick the snot out of Opteron. In any case, the fact that Cray won the bid with an Opteron-based supercomputer should be more than a litt
ummm.... (Score:1)
Ummm... no offense to Cray, but that's pretty f*ing lame.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need to 'encourage' our kids to desire scientific jobs.
Re:ummm.... (Score:1)
A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:5, Informative)
* Clusters can not compete with supercomputers. They aren't even in the same market space. Cray doesn't make clusters, and clusters have not taken away their business.
* Cray doesn't take off the shelf hardware and sell it as fancy clusters. Actually look into the details of these machines. While processors sometimes are off the shelf much of the surrounding hardware and software is custom.
* This 50 million contract is one of many that cray has. They also just recently in the news got a 200 million dollar contract. They also are a contender in the DARPA HPCS thing. That could be a lot more if they get it. They aren't dieing.
* They aren't owned by SGI any longer. They were bought from SGI by Tera who renamed themselves cray.
* The top500 list is nonsense. It is based off of 1 benchmark (linpack.) That benchmark doesn't stress the interconnect too much and can allow clusters to appear to compete with supercomputers if you manage to ignore all the other factors. The number of teraflops has very little to do with performance. To see a more well rounded and thought out measurement of top systems check out HPCC's website. http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/hpcc_results.cgi [utk.edu]
* Bluegene doesn't kick Cray's ass. See the above and then see how it really performs overall. In some areas it does better and in others it just gets destroyed. Depending on the real world problem a full size blue gene may not even be able to perform as well as a much smaller Cray.
If you don't know what you are talking about look it up before posting. Just because it's the common belief doesn't mean there is any truth to it!
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:1)
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:1)
Cray making a comeback!? Now if that don't beat all.
What's next? Borland selling a good, cheap Pascal compiler again?
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:3, Informative)
Secondly, to say the computers that Cray sells is not "off the shelf" can be argued depending on how you look at it. Today's Crays are not the fully proprietary machines of yesteryear. They all use AMD Opteron processors and leverage the onboard memory controller and hypertransport bus to make a processor fabric simple. The main custom items in the system are the "interconnect routers" that tie all the hypertransport busses together
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:2, Informative)
The linpack benchmark used to do the top500 list is a basic, dense matvec solver algorithm. (See wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINPACK [wikipedia.org]) This algorithm used to be the core of most scientific codes, back in the days when you would simply use the computer to solve a simple (but large) set of equations. In the las
Re:A few notes to clear things up (Score:1)
However, the arena of molecular dynamics is one in which clusters and MPP in general are easily the better choice than a monolithic supercomputer. On the one hand, you can make each node an automaton to describe a single particle in a very object-orientated fashion. On the other hand, you can make each node representative of a spatial cell whereby the boundaries interact with those of its nearest-neighb
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:2)
That's not very true. Supercomputers will have a solid market into the foreseeable future, but they certainly are facing competition from improvements in clusters.
Sometimes interconnect speed can be reasonably traded-off in exchange for a significantly reduced price, or for additional CPU power, local RAM, etc. Often, problems that are gener
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:1)
To quote a collegue of mine "The interconnect IS the machine!"
The primary difference between a supercomputer and a cluster is the degree of itegration between the computing elements. You can demand that a Supercomputer MUST have a crossbar switch or similar close coupled interconnection method but that only scales so far. For a good example have a look at the earth simulator [jamstec.go.jp], you'r
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:2)
The other problem with it is that it only counts systems that people want you to know exist. For example, it's a safe bet that the NSA has multiple systems that would qualify but are not listed. There are probably a significant number of systems like that in the world - so calling it the 'top 500' is just silly.
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:3, Informative)
He's right. For *ALL* computing tasks, using the right tool for the job can increase performance exponentially. Slashdotters should know this -- A 400mhz GPU can outperform a 3ghz CPU on vector and matrix operations by huge leaps and bounds
Clusters are just another tool that work very well for very specific jobs, and very poorly for others. These jobs are mainly those that can be massively parallelized (ie. brute-forcing a math equation -- Computer A should try these valu
Re:A few notes to clear things up (mod me up!) (Score:3, Informative)
I agree completely.
This is not exactly a wrong statement, but it is incredibly broad. First off, Cray does make clusters. At a fundamental level, the basic separate-box clusters connected by Ethernet are the exact same thing as a
Possible Use (Score:1, Funny)
The Ultimate Gaming Machine!!!
Just think (Score:1, Troll)
Cray who? (Score:2)
Hood? (Score:2, Funny)
I will blow it out of the water (Score:1)
White collar welfare. (Score:2, Insightful)
America would be better served if we sink the money in creating interoperability standards and creates ways to increase competition in the computational industries. Every c
Re:White collar welfare. (Score:2)
Furthermore, programming a modern cray is not very much like programming a YMP. The code is structured