3000+ cpu G5 Cluster?

the placid casual · June 21, 2004 4:28PM

Other than Virginia Tech.

Heard whispers about this, or something similar from 3 different places now, the latest of which is over at MacNN...

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...88#post2045188

Anyone know anything about it over here?

aarons · June 21, 2004 5:48PM

Could be the recently announced 1566 G5 XServe Cluster just purchased by the US Army:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...=1087832245000

Quote:

Apple Computer Inc. will announce on Monday the sale of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers to COLSA Corp., which will be used to build what is expected to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The US$5.8 million cluster will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the U.S. Army.

"We did about a year and a half of research on a variety of processors before making our decision," Dr Anthony DiRienzo, executive vice president at COLSA Corp., told MacCentral. "We did a best value competition and Apple won that competition. It was based on performance; the facility (power requirements, floor space etc.); cost; and an assessment of vendor stability. We solicited to six companies and they won."

The supercomputer, named MACH 5, is expected to deliver peak performance capability of more than 25 TFlops/second. In comparison, the Virginia Tech supercomputer announced last year attained sustained performance of approximately 10 TFlops/second, according to Apple director of product management, server hardware, Alex Grossman.

With those numbers, the MACH 5 would rank second only to Japan's $350 million Earth Simulator computer.

"We evaluated PC-based proposals from other vendors but none came close to delivering either the price, performance or manageability of the AppleXserve G5," said DiRienzo.

The Xserve G5 supercluster system is expected to be online and working for the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) division of the US Army Research and Development Command by late Fall.

Shortly, DiRienzo said they would take delivery of 300 Xserves a day, set them up in the racks and the next day begin the process again until all of the Xserves are installed and working.

as

silvergun · June 21, 2004 6:16PM

I reckon about 14.6 Tflops

existence · June 21, 2004 6:21PM

Can anyone tell me what information we're missing?

2200 2GHz G5s ~ 10 TFLOPS

3132 G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

mcq · June 21, 2004 6:25PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Existence

Can anyone tell me what information we're missing?

2200 2GHz G5s ~ 10 TFLOPS

3132 G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

Maccentral sucked at that part of reporting.

Big Mac has sustained power of 10 TFlops. Mach 5 has hopefully a peak of 25 Tflops, but hopefully a sustained of 15 TFlops.

silvergun · June 21, 2004 6:38PM

Unless they use dual 3ghz which will peak at 21 TFLOPS

oldmacfan · June 21, 2004 6:42PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Existence

Can anyone tell me what information we're missing?

2200 2GHz G5s ~ 10 TFLOPS

3132 G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

2200 2Ghz G5 in PowerMacs

3132 2Ghz G5 in XServes

telomar · June 21, 2004 6:46PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Existence

Can anyone tell me what information we're missing?

2200 2GHz G5s ~ 10 TFLOPS

3132 G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

It's actually:

2200 2 GHz G5s = 17.6 TFLOPS

3132 2 GHz G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

Those are the peak figures for each. The sustained numbers were ~ 10 TFLOPs for Big Mac and not yet known for the latter.

dfryer · June 21, 2004 6:59PM

They're really putting XServes on the map as an "easy top500 supercomputer" solution, although it's the "clustering" approach that makes it all possible - I would assume there's stuff you can do with a more integrated supercomputer that wouldn't be feasible here.

Still, kudos to Apple for making this sale!

airsluf · June 21, 2004 8:28PM

Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.

Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.

Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.

tomb of the unknown · June 21, 2004 10:00PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Telomar

It's actually:

2200 2 GHz G5s = 17.6 TFLOPS

3132 2 GHz G5s ~ 25 TFLOPS

Those are the peak figures for each. The sustained numbers were ~ 10 TFLOPs for Big Mac and not yet known for the latter.

Figure around 55% efficiency. The Army cluster will be not be using Infiniband fabric (as VT did), so I estimate they'll get somewhere around 12.5-14.0 TF Max. They're probably shooting for 15TF a second.

wrong robot · June 21, 2004 10:57PM

If they are trying to create the fastest in the world(as some articles have said) then why are they only get 1566?

\

dur, they are shooting for "one of the" fastest.

eitherway, if a couple more institutions make their own 'big macs' then apple products could easily fill up most of hte top 10

staphbaby · June 21, 2004 11:51PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tomb of the Unknown

Figure around 55% efficiency. The Army cluster will be not be using Infiniband fabric (as VT did), so I estimate they'll get somewhere around 12.5-14.0 TF Max. They're probably shooting for 15TF a second.

Perhaps on linpack. The interview suggested that they didn't go for a hardcore network system because their workloads were very compute intensive, but didn't involve particularly big data sets.

ast3r3x · June 22, 2004 8:35PM

Rendering for the NEW America's Army

mooseman · June 23, 2004 10:58AM

...the two new ones should probably have slightly higher efficiencies, given that no units will have to be used for error correction like they were with the Big Mac cluster. The XServes use EEC RAM, where the plain ol' G5 Power Mac does not.

Not sure how much difference it will make, other than "some."

airsluf · June 24, 2004 3:48PM

Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.

Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.

Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.

addison · June 24, 2004 6:39PM

It seem likely that apple will get the number two spot. What do they need to do to get no 1.?

wmf · June 24, 2004 8:25PM

Quote:

Originally posted by mooseman

...the two new ones should probably have slightly higher efficiencies, given that no units will have to be used for error correction like they were with the Big Mac cluster. The XServes use ECC RAM, where the plain ol' G5 Power Mac does not.

I think VT sort of cheated and didn't count the error-checking overhead (which was 2x).

3000+ cpu G5 Cluster?

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