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ykhan
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 Posted:
Fri Nov 26, 2004 10:29 am Post subject:
What's Cray been doing lately? |
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Been wondering what Cray was upto recently. They were supposed to have
already released the Red Storm computer (now known as the XT3) in
Sandia National Labs by now, but I haven't heard much about it. Red
Storm has already been eclipsed by two other computers. So it looks
like the delays are caused by a lack of the router chips for the
XT3's. The router chips are produced by IBM Microelectronics.
Similarly IBM Micro is delaying shipments of vector processors used in
Cray's X1E supercomputer line.
But it looks like Cray's recently purchased Octigabay supercluster
line (now known as XD1) are coming out on time.
This story is about Cray finding a customer who will take both its XD1
and X1E lineups at the same time. That must be one funky joint cluster
considering the two lines use totally different processors and
different instruction sets.
Cray books $8 million X1E and XD1 supercomputer deal - Computer
Business Review
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=C3ACCFFF-E44D-4DA6-9F36-F2168D434872
Yousuf Khan |
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Janne Blomqvist
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| Posted:
Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:42 pm Post subject:
Re: What's Cray been doing lately? |
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In article <bd84ed0c.0411252129.63b245b@posting.google.com>, ykhan wrote:
| Quote: | They were supposed to have
already released the Red Storm computer (now known as the XT3) in
Sandia National Labs by now, but I haven't heard much about it.
|
As was mentioned here a few weeks ago, about 10 Tflop/s of Red Storm
is installed, the entire thing is supposed to be ready in January
2005.
Take a look at their website, among the SC2004 marketing slides there
are some performance results reported for the XT3. Except for vector
machines, it seems to have higher memory bandwidth/flop and
interconnect bandwidth/flop than anything else out there.
They seem to be selling the thing for about $0.8 million/Tflop which
puts it in the same price range as a cluster with a high end
interconnect. Considering all of this, IMHO it doesn't seem too
unlikely that the XT3 will be a commercial success.
What I'm wondering is what are they going to do with the upcoming dual
core Opterons? AFAIK, the Catamount microkernel that runs the compute
nodes is not SMP capable. Are they going to make Catamount SMP-capable
or will it be possible to run separate kernels for each core?
| Quote: | Red
Storm has already been eclipsed by two other computers.
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Which, in the end, doesn't mean that much for a prospective buyer.
| Quote: | So it looks
like the delays are caused by a lack of the router chips for the
XT3's. The router chips are produced by IBM Microelectronics.
Similarly IBM Micro is delaying shipments of vector processors used in
Cray's X1E supercomputer line.
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<tinfoil hat>
It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!
</tinfoil hat>
Seriously, I think this is just one of those "shit happens"
things. IBM Micro stands to lose lots of money if it becomes known
that they drag their feet fabbing stuff that potentially could compete
with IBM gear.
I don't think it's a "joint cluster", as in a single job using both
vector and scalar processors. The software and hardware for
heterogenous clusters isn't really there yet (but see Crays Rainier
project). It's probably two separate clusters, possibly connected with
some grid middleware (one batch scheduler to command them all). If
they're doing something really funky, perhaps they're using part of
the XD1 as a frontend for the X1 (login nodes, compiling, network i/o
etc.).
--
Janne Blomqvist |
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Greg Lindahl
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:27 am Post subject:
Re: What's Cray been doing lately? |
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In article <slrncqk70h.hk4.foo@vipunen.hut.fi>,
Janne Blomqvist <foo@bar.invalid> wrote:
| Quote: | Take a look at their website, among the SC2004 marketing slides there
are some performance results reported for the XT3. Except for vector
machines, it seems to have higher memory bandwidth/flop and
interconnect bandwidth/flop than anything else out there.
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That's a triumph of marketing, then -- Cray gets the usual memory
bandwidth out of the Opteron.
-- greg |
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Yousuf Khan
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:19 am Post subject:
Re: What's Cray been doing lately? |
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Janne Blomqvist wrote:
| Quote: | As was mentioned here a few weeks ago, about 10 Tflop/s of Red Storm
is installed, the entire thing is supposed to be ready in January
2005.
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Ah, thanks for the update. I hadn't followed that thread.
| Quote: | What I'm wondering is what are they going to do with the upcoming dual
core Opterons? AFAIK, the Catamount microkernel that runs the compute
nodes is not SMP capable. Are they going to make Catamount SMP-capable
or will it be possible to run separate kernels for each core?
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Is Catamount the Cray proprietary OS, or is it a distro of Linux? I had
heard that the compute nodes were being run under Linux, and Linux
should be SMP-capable.
| Quote: | Red
Storm has already been eclipsed by two other computers.
Which, in the end, doesn't mean that much for a prospective buyer.
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You mean to say that the HPC crowd are not swayed by hype and
one-upmanship? :-)
| Quote: | I don't think it's a "joint cluster", as in a single job using both
vector and scalar processors. The software and hardware for
heterogenous clusters isn't really there yet (but see Crays Rainier
project).
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I don't think so either. Just no details about it one way or another.
| Quote: | It's probably two separate clusters, possibly connected with
some grid middleware (one batch scheduler to command them all).
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The one ring to control them all! :-)
| Quote: | If
they're doing something really funky, perhaps they're using part of
the XD1 as a frontend for the X1 (login nodes, compiling, network i/o
etc.).
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It's certainly possible to use the individual XD1 nodes as simple
front-end servers, but of course their high-speed interconnect would be
totally wasted in that task.
Yousuf Khan |
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Janne Blomqvist
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 29, 2004 7:12 am Post subject:
Re: What's Cray been doing lately? |
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On 2004-11-28, Greg Lindahl <lindahl@pbm.com> wrote:
| Quote: | In article <slrncqk70h.hk4.foo@vipunen.hut.fi>,
Janne Blomqvist <foo@bar.invalid> wrote:
Take a look at their website, among the SC2004 marketing slides there
are some performance results reported for the XT3. Except for vector
machines, it seems to have higher memory bandwidth/flop and
interconnect bandwidth/flop than anything else out there.
That's a triumph of marketing, then -- Cray gets the usual memory
bandwidth out of the Opteron.
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You're right, of course. I should have said "as good as or better
than", with the usual marketing disclaimers. By no means did I mean to
imply that marketing slides should be treated with anything but utmost
suspicion.
Anyways, results for the XD1 have now been posted on the HPC Challenge
website, so I did some quick checks and it appears that the memory
BW/flop results they quote in their marketing slides is roughly
consistent (give or take 30 %) with the HPCC results. Although at
least the newer power4 machines have higher memory bw/flop than the
opterons, but perhaps unsurprisingly they are absent from the
marketing slides. ;-) As for network BW/flop, it appears that they
used some other benchmark than one of the HPCC ones to measure network
BW, so I don't know how that compares..
--
Janne Blomqvist |
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Janne Blomqvist
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 29, 2004 7:25 am Post subject:
Re: What's Cray been doing lately? |
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On 2004-11-29, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Janne Blomqvist wrote:
What I'm wondering is what are they going to do with the upcoming dual
core Opterons? AFAIK, the Catamount microkernel that runs the compute
nodes is not SMP capable. Are they going to make Catamount SMP-capable
or will it be possible to run separate kernels for each core?
Is Catamount the Cray proprietary OS, or is it a distro of Linux? I had
heard that the compute nodes were being run under Linux, and Linux
should be SMP-capable.
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Nah, you got it backwards. The service nodes run SUSE Linux, but the
compute nodes all run Catamount. Catamount is a descendant of Cougar,
a microkernel designed by Sandia (for ASCI Red IIRC). I don't know if
it still is developed under some kind of Sandia/Cray partnership, or
if Cray has taken over development.
| Quote: | If
they're doing something really funky, perhaps they're using part of
the XD1 as a frontend for the X1 (login nodes, compiling, network i/o
etc.).
It's certainly possible to use the individual XD1 nodes as simple
front-end servers, but of course their high-speed interconnect would be
totally wasted in that task.
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Yes, but it's less waste than dedicating some of the astronomically
expensive X1 cpu:s for such tasks, which AFAIK is the usual
configuration.
--
Janne Blomqvist |
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