SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 22:25 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (5 responses) Heh. Favorite *imaginary* server. I wonder how many of those readers actually *have* one.... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:02 UTC (Thu) by joeman (guest, #6711) [Link] (3 responses) I have one. Any further questions? SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:51 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses) Interesting. Is the scaling as legendary as SGI would make believe? (compared to, say, a myrinet-connected cluster; a Gigabit-connected cluster; a simple commodity dual-cpu athlon box)Sorry to ask so bluntly; but I'd honestly and sincerely appreciate any opinion ... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 18:20 UTC (Fri) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link] It's a different sort of scalability. The Beowulf style clusters you are talking about require a work load that can be broken down into discrete units. For example making a movie each system can be handed a frame or set of frames to render and doesn't need to know what's in the next frame. In some simulations and mathematical models the calculations cannot be broken into discrete units because there is too much interdependancy. I've never worked with this sort of thing but I think things like automobile accident simulations, simulations of nuclear bombs, or virtual wind tunnels cannot be broken up into discrete work units so a beowolf cluster would do little good. Perhaps my examples are off whack, like I said I've never worked with these type of systems.-- Dennis SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:38 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Sure. What percentage of the respondents to the Linux Journal poll do you think you comprise? :) SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 13, 2003 6:46 UTC (Thu) by cinnerz (guest, #5943) [Link] I manage two of then - a 12 way and a 128 way.They are actually pretty nice machines. A lot easier to manage a single 128 way machine than a whole bunch of little machines. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 3:34 UTC (Fri) by horen (guest, #2514) [Link] (4 responses) I don't know about going's-on in other countries, but here in Israel, SGI has repeatedly engaged in a version of "dumping" -- selling brand-new equipment as "refurbished" -- in order to come in as low-bid on numerous tenders within the university community and sell less-than-cutting-edge equipment. In so doing, the High-Performance Computing Unit of the Israel Inter-University Computation Center, as well as individual universities, has been "stuck" with: An aging Origin 2000, consisting of 56 dual-cpu nodes (R12000 400MHz) with 512MB RAM per/node and operating at 50% utilization; A new Origin 2000, consisting of 64 dual-cpu nodes (R12000 300MHz) with 512MB RAM per/node and operating at 0% utilization; An ancient 1200L cluster, consisting of 33 dual-cpu nodes (PIII 800MHz) with 256MB RAM per/node and operating at 5% utilization; An old and unused Onyx2 InfiniteReality2 Graphics deskside system, consisting of two 8MB cache MIPS R12000 300Mhz cpus with 3GB RAM; and A Cray SV1, consisting of 16 SV1 nodes with 4GB of uniform shared memory and operating at 97% utilization. SGI's dubious business practices duped management into purchasing the new Origin 2000 (item #2), rather than investing thse same funds to upgrade both the existing Origin 2000 (item #1) and the heavily-used Cray. And SGI has done it, again, "dumping" a brand-new TP4100 storage unit as "refurbished" in a tender for a centralized bioinformatics unit, in order to breathe new life (hah!) into the Origin 2000 (item #2); this, despite far better solutions from Network Appliance and other vendors. While I realize that P.T. Barnum's famous "Sucker born every minute" applies no-less to academia, it is a sad commentary when one of Silicon Valley's (once) flagship companies chooses to conduct its business in this fashion, rather than on the merits of its products. One final thought: if SGI had been a more "socially responsible" firm, it would have counselled upgrading the Origin 2000 and Cray, rather than what amounted to "throwing good money after bad". Shame on them, for turning a win-win situation into a circus sideshow, where the biggest losers are the students, researchers, and the Israeli taxpayers. PS: SGI recently sold an Altix 3000 to the Weizmann Institute for Science -- we'll see if their researchers stop using the Cray and/or local clusters. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:41 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses) SGI does a lot of good development, but that has one nasty side effect - it costs too much money. As a result, their hardware is ridiculously overpriced, to the point where their offers are absolutely out of the question despite the quality work.Customers know this; their sales people know this. IMO, SGI's sales people must be completely unable to sell anything to anyone for the asking price. So, they resort to the only thing they can do: Offer useless equipment (which is not anything they'd really want to sell in the first place), but at conditions which are at least tolerable for the customer.I have heard an Altix price quote above $10.000 per CPU, Itanium CPU (and that's a lie - it was very well above). SGI has fabulous technology and engineers ... but at that price tag, even the very best scaling is beaten hands-down by a rusty old x86 cluster - then, at least, you can run single-cpu on multiple machines ...Trapped like that, it's no wonder that SGI's sales staff is desparate enough to resort to somewhat shady deals ... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 16:36 UTC (Fri) by parimi (guest, #5773) [Link] I couldn't agree more. SGI boxen cost a fortune. We had an eight Processor Origin 2000 that we desperately wanted to get rid of. They offered us a refurbished machine for about $30,000 and sweetly mentioned that the Origin 2000 servers are not being manufactured anymore and will eventually be replaced by their Origin 3000 servers. These Origin 3000's were even more expensive - 4 way costed about $60,000. They also tried to make a deal for one of their new Altix boxes.. Being a Lab with limited funds, we finally decided to buy an 8 way Linux box from Dell with 4 Gigs of RAM :)The Origin 2000 we had was a great machine. Perhaps only corporations with lots of money can help SGI survive in the market.. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 9:57 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses) > SGI recently sold an Altix 3000 to the Weizmann Institute for Science -- > we'll see if their researchers stop using the Cray and/or local clusters.The Cray has been idle for a couple of years. Not that it was _efficiently_ used ever - one has to use specially tailored libraries and/or write code suitable for parallelization to utilize the Cray's power. Having spent a nearly-six-zeros bunch of bucks on the hardware, some essential HPC software wasn't purchased. And in scalar performance benchmarks, my Pentium-100 box w/ Linux at that time (5 years or so ago, when it was bought) beated it slightly ;-). Of course, it (Cray) had a couple of GB of RAM which wasn't so easy to get around on a PC back then.In general, decisions about purchasing new hardware (and more generally, about anything computing-related) here at the Weizmann are often taken in a way that I'd believe could only be possible under communist regimes. To have an opinion in the matters and expressing it openly results in closed accounts, firing off, etc. This concerns both researchers and computing center staff. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 10:00 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > code suitable for parallelization Should be read "for vectorization and parallelization".
Posted Nov 6, 2003 22:25 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (5 responses)
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:02 UTC (Thu) by joeman (guest, #6711) [Link] (3 responses) I have one. Any further questions? SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:51 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses) Interesting. Is the scaling as legendary as SGI would make believe? (compared to, say, a myrinet-connected cluster; a Gigabit-connected cluster; a simple commodity dual-cpu athlon box)Sorry to ask so bluntly; but I'd honestly and sincerely appreciate any opinion ... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 18:20 UTC (Fri) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link] It's a different sort of scalability. The Beowulf style clusters you are talking about require a work load that can be broken down into discrete units. For example making a movie each system can be handed a frame or set of frames to render and doesn't need to know what's in the next frame. In some simulations and mathematical models the calculations cannot be broken into discrete units because there is too much interdependancy. I've never worked with this sort of thing but I think things like automobile accident simulations, simulations of nuclear bombs, or virtual wind tunnels cannot be broken up into discrete work units so a beowolf cluster would do little good. Perhaps my examples are off whack, like I said I've never worked with these type of systems.-- Dennis SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:38 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Sure. What percentage of the respondents to the Linux Journal poll do you think you comprise? :) SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 13, 2003 6:46 UTC (Thu) by cinnerz (guest, #5943) [Link] I manage two of then - a 12 way and a 128 way.They are actually pretty nice machines. A lot easier to manage a single 128 way machine than a whole bunch of little machines.
Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:02 UTC (Thu) by joeman (guest, #6711) [Link] (3 responses)
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:51 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses) Interesting. Is the scaling as legendary as SGI would make believe? (compared to, say, a myrinet-connected cluster; a Gigabit-connected cluster; a simple commodity dual-cpu athlon box)Sorry to ask so bluntly; but I'd honestly and sincerely appreciate any opinion ... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 18:20 UTC (Fri) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link] It's a different sort of scalability. The Beowulf style clusters you are talking about require a work load that can be broken down into discrete units. For example making a movie each system can be handed a frame or set of frames to render and doesn't need to know what's in the next frame. In some simulations and mathematical models the calculations cannot be broken into discrete units because there is too much interdependancy. I've never worked with this sort of thing but I think things like automobile accident simulations, simulations of nuclear bombs, or virtual wind tunnels cannot be broken up into discrete work units so a beowolf cluster would do little good. Perhaps my examples are off whack, like I said I've never worked with these type of systems.-- Dennis SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:38 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Sure. What percentage of the respondents to the Linux Journal poll do you think you comprise? :)
Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:51 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses)
Sorry to ask so bluntly; but I'd honestly and sincerely appreciate any opinion ...
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 18:20 UTC (Fri) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link] It's a different sort of scalability. The Beowulf style clusters you are talking about require a work load that can be broken down into discrete units. For example making a movie each system can be handed a frame or set of frames to render and doesn't need to know what's in the next frame. In some simulations and mathematical models the calculations cannot be broken into discrete units because there is too much interdependancy. I've never worked with this sort of thing but I think things like automobile accident simulations, simulations of nuclear bombs, or virtual wind tunnels cannot be broken up into discrete work units so a beowolf cluster would do little good. Perhaps my examples are off whack, like I said I've never worked with these type of systems.-- Dennis
Posted Nov 7, 2003 18:20 UTC (Fri) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link]
The Beowulf style clusters you are talking about require a work load that can be broken down into discrete units. For example making a movie each system can be handed a frame or set of frames to render and doesn't need to know what's in the next frame.
In some simulations and mathematical models the calculations cannot be broken into discrete units because there is too much interdependancy. I've never worked with this sort of thing but I think things like automobile accident simulations, simulations of nuclear bombs, or virtual wind tunnels cannot be broken up into discrete work units so a beowolf cluster would do little good.
Perhaps my examples are off whack, like I said I've never worked with these type of systems.
-- Dennis
Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:38 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]
Posted Nov 13, 2003 6:46 UTC (Thu) by cinnerz (guest, #5943) [Link]
They are actually pretty nice machines. A lot easier to manage a single 128 way machine than a whole bunch of little machines.
Posted Nov 7, 2003 3:34 UTC (Fri) by horen (guest, #2514) [Link] (4 responses)
I don't know about going's-on in other countries, but here in Israel, SGI has repeatedly engaged in a version of "dumping" -- selling brand-new equipment as "refurbished" -- in order to come in as low-bid on numerous tenders within the university community and sell less-than-cutting-edge equipment.
In so doing, the High-Performance Computing Unit of the Israel Inter-University Computation Center, as well as individual universities, has been "stuck" with:
SGI's dubious business practices duped management into purchasing the new Origin 2000 (item #2), rather than investing thse same funds to upgrade both the existing Origin 2000 (item #1) and the heavily-used Cray.
And SGI has done it, again, "dumping" a brand-new TP4100 storage unit as "refurbished" in a tender for a centralized bioinformatics unit, in order to breathe new life (hah!) into the Origin 2000 (item #2); this, despite far better solutions from Network Appliance and other vendors.
While I realize that P.T. Barnum's famous "Sucker born every minute" applies no-less to academia, it is a sad commentary when one of Silicon Valley's (once) flagship companies chooses to conduct its business in this fashion, rather than on the merits of its products.
One final thought: if SGI had been a more "socially responsible" firm, it would have counselled upgrading the Origin 2000 and Cray, rather than what amounted to "throwing good money after bad". Shame on them, for turning a win-win situation into a circus sideshow, where the biggest losers are the students, researchers, and the Israeli taxpayers.
PS: SGI recently sold an Altix 3000 to the Weizmann Institute for Science -- we'll see if their researchers stop using the Cray and/or local clusters.
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:41 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses) SGI does a lot of good development, but that has one nasty side effect - it costs too much money. As a result, their hardware is ridiculously overpriced, to the point where their offers are absolutely out of the question despite the quality work.Customers know this; their sales people know this. IMO, SGI's sales people must be completely unable to sell anything to anyone for the asking price. So, they resort to the only thing they can do: Offer useless equipment (which is not anything they'd really want to sell in the first place), but at conditions which are at least tolerable for the customer.I have heard an Altix price quote above $10.000 per CPU, Itanium CPU (and that's a lie - it was very well above). SGI has fabulous technology and engineers ... but at that price tag, even the very best scaling is beaten hands-down by a rusty old x86 cluster - then, at least, you can run single-cpu on multiple machines ...Trapped like that, it's no wonder that SGI's sales staff is desparate enough to resort to somewhat shady deals ... SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 16:36 UTC (Fri) by parimi (guest, #5773) [Link] I couldn't agree more. SGI boxen cost a fortune. We had an eight Processor Origin 2000 that we desperately wanted to get rid of. They offered us a refurbished machine for about $30,000 and sweetly mentioned that the Origin 2000 servers are not being manufactured anymore and will eventually be replaced by their Origin 3000 servers. These Origin 3000's were even more expensive - 4 way costed about $60,000. They also tried to make a deal for one of their new Altix boxes.. Being a Lab with limited funds, we finally decided to buy an 8 way Linux box from Dell with 4 Gigs of RAM :)The Origin 2000 we had was a great machine. Perhaps only corporations with lots of money can help SGI survive in the market.. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 9:57 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses) > SGI recently sold an Altix 3000 to the Weizmann Institute for Science -- > we'll see if their researchers stop using the Cray and/or local clusters.The Cray has been idle for a couple of years. Not that it was _efficiently_ used ever - one has to use specially tailored libraries and/or write code suitable for parallelization to utilize the Cray's power. Having spent a nearly-six-zeros bunch of bucks on the hardware, some essential HPC software wasn't purchased. And in scalar performance benchmarks, my Pentium-100 box w/ Linux at that time (5 years or so ago, when it was bought) beated it slightly ;-). Of course, it (Cray) had a couple of GB of RAM which wasn't so easy to get around on a PC back then.In general, decisions about purchasing new hardware (and more generally, about anything computing-related) here at the Weizmann are often taken in a way that I'd believe could only be possible under communist regimes. To have an opinion in the matters and expressing it openly results in closed accounts, firing off, etc. This concerns both researchers and computing center staff. SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 10:00 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > code suitable for parallelization Should be read "for vectorization and parallelization".
Posted Nov 7, 2003 4:41 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses)
Customers know this; their sales people know this. IMO, SGI's sales people must be completely unable to sell anything to anyone for the asking price. So, they resort to the only thing they can do: Offer useless equipment (which is not anything they'd really want to sell in the first place), but at conditions which are at least tolerable for the customer.
I have heard an Altix price quote above $10.000 per CPU, Itanium CPU (and that's a lie - it was very well above). SGI has fabulous technology and engineers ... but at that price tag, even the very best scaling is beaten hands-down by a rusty old x86 cluster - then, at least, you can run single-cpu on multiple machines ...
Trapped like that, it's no wonder that SGI's sales staff is desparate enough to resort to somewhat shady deals ...
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 16:36 UTC (Fri) by parimi (guest, #5773) [Link] I couldn't agree more. SGI boxen cost a fortune. We had an eight Processor Origin 2000 that we desperately wanted to get rid of. They offered us a refurbished machine for about $30,000 and sweetly mentioned that the Origin 2000 servers are not being manufactured anymore and will eventually be replaced by their Origin 3000 servers. These Origin 3000's were even more expensive - 4 way costed about $60,000. They also tried to make a deal for one of their new Altix boxes.. Being a Lab with limited funds, we finally decided to buy an 8 way Linux box from Dell with 4 Gigs of RAM :)The Origin 2000 we had was a great machine. Perhaps only corporations with lots of money can help SGI survive in the market..
Posted Nov 7, 2003 16:36 UTC (Fri) by parimi (guest, #5773) [Link]
The Origin 2000 we had was a great machine. Perhaps only corporations with lots of money can help SGI survive in the market..
Posted Nov 7, 2003 9:57 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses)
The Cray has been idle for a couple of years. Not that it was _efficiently_ used ever - one has to use specially tailored libraries and/or write code suitable for parallelization to utilize the Cray's power. Having spent a nearly-six-zeros bunch of bucks on the hardware, some essential HPC software wasn't purchased. And in scalar performance benchmarks, my Pentium-100 box w/ Linux at that time (5 years or so ago, when it was bought) beated it slightly ;-). Of course, it (Cray) had a couple of GB of RAM which wasn't so easy to get around on a PC back then.
In general, decisions about purchasing new hardware (and more generally, about anything computing-related) here at the Weizmann are often taken in a way that I'd believe could only be possible under communist regimes. To have an opinion in the matters and expressing it openly results in closed accounts, firing off, etc. This concerns both researchers and computing center staff.
SGI Altix 3000 Proves Favorite With Linux Journal Readers Posted Nov 7, 2003 10:00 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > code suitable for parallelization Should be read "for vectorization and parallelization".
Posted Nov 7, 2003 10:00 UTC (Fri) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]
Should be read "for vectorization and parallelization".
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