LWN: Comments on "NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer"

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

pointwood — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:36:48 +0000

This should answer your question: http://news.com.com/Two+records+in+one+day+for+SGI+superc...

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

gurulabs — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 05:16:06 +0000

Why not announce as soon as you've broken the record vs waiting another X days before the whole thing is installed.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

JohnBell — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 04:53:09 +0000

<count> 5! Ah ha ha haaaa... 5 billion dollars out of Microsoft's pockets! </count>

Sorry, couldn't resist :-).

That would be $7,668,767, thanks!

bojan — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:50:06 +0000

First 8 CPUs: $4,999
Additional CPUs: $749 * (10240 - 8) = $7,663,768

There is no free lunch -- Darl McBride

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

emkey — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:50:27 +0000

I'm curious as to why they only used 16. People generally pull out all the stops to get the highest possible numbers. The fact that 16 is a power of 2 makes me wonder if there is some sort of hardware/software issue that prevents them from using the full system.

Still, an impressive accomplishment.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

dcg — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:53:05 +0000

According to http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2... , they only used 16 of the 20 Altix boxes, or 3072 less processors. I guess they could get higher figures.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

emkey — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:07:18 +0000

Thats my understanding as well based on the following...

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3416891

And the IBM benchmark was apparently on 1/10th of the total system to be delivered.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

JoeBuck — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:44:49 +0000

Actually, I believe that Lawrence Livermore Lab has ordered a version of the IBM BlueGene/L machine that should pass the SGI/NASA machine when it is completed. So yes, someone has ordered one.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

vondo — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:04:50 +0000

I think it's a reference to IBM, who's latest announcement of a super computer was something like: "We built this node of a system, and if you take n * 1000 of them and hook them together, you will get the fastest computer ever. BTW, no one has ordered such a system and we certainly haven't built one."

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

emkey — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:29:03 +0000

The use of the word "stunt" is interesting. Anyone know what this is refering to? I suspect I know but don't want to venture a guess for various reasons.

NASA announces world's fastest supercomputer

gurulabs — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:09:03 +0000

Cool that it runs Linux...

The NASA guy sounds like he has been watching too much Sesame Streat.

Dax Kelson
Guru Labs

(This post brought to you by the letter D and the number 9)