CDRLabs.com

Everyone read up on the latest supercomputer from everyone's favorite supercomputer company, Cray! It can scale up to 4,096 processors and 65.5 TeraBytes of Rambus RDRAM. The fully loaded system will be cranking through 52.5 TeraFlops. That's like a lot and stuff.

http://www.cray.com/products/systems/x1/

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=cray+x1&sa=N&tab=wn

Yeah, I'd need to add an extra garage just to house that bitch.

What OS does the Cray run?

Hey! Who voted no??!?!? We should have nothing but the finest for CDRLabs!

cfitz

I voted no. I don't believe all the hype. Heck, I'd vote for a 386 Linux machine over a Cray Supercomputer!

TheWizard wrote:I voted no. I don't believe all the hype. Heck, I'd vote for a 386 Linux machine over a Cray Supercomputer!

Actually I was a bit surprised to hear that Cray was still around. I thought they had fallen on hard times, with their super-expensive products being too quickly overtaken by things such as massive arrays of 386's running Linux (well, maybe not 386's, but you get the idea).

Still, I'm disappointed in you, Wizard, not wanting the latest and greatest. Are you getting conservative on us? Besides, not believing hype?? Why... that's downright un-American! Are you trying to put the boys of Madison Avenue out of business?

cfitz

My last Cray paycheck was dated Nov. 5, 2002, so I'm pretty sure we're still around.

People who don't "buy into the hype" are misinformed. If you'd like an intelligent conversation on what clusters are good at and what they aren't good at, I'm all for it. If you'd rather troll, that's up to you.

Boone

btw, Cray X1 runs UNICOS, which is a Unix version of the Cray Operating System (UniCOS). It looks and acts like Unix, but it works on the Cray Instruction Set. The hardware is totally custom (vector/scalar processors, memory interface, network), but it used Rambus RDRAM.

The Red Storm project ( http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news- ... storm.html ) uses AMD Opteron processors, but it hasn't been announced what OS it will run.

Boone wrote:My last Cray paycheck was dated Nov. 5, 2002, so I'm pretty sure we're still around.

People who don't "buy into the hype" are misinformed. If you'd like an intelligent conversation on what clusters are good at and what they aren't good at, I'm all for it. If you'd rather troll, that's up to you.

Boone

Easy, Boone. I wasn't trolling or attacking you or your employer. I didn't even know you work for Cray. As it happens, I was the first to vote in your poll (even before you did, assuming that you have), and I voted "yes, upgrade the CDRLabs test bed." I was also the one who chastised (in a joking manner) the first anonymous poster who voted "no". And finally I’m the one who characterized the system you linked as "the latest and greatest".

This is the Beer Garden. I thought we were allowed to have light-hearted fun in here.

cfitz

PalmOS or WinCE, take your pick.

KuoH

TheWizard wrote:What OS does the Cray run?

I was actually responding to thewizard. Comparing a multi-million dollar computer to a 386 isn't light hearted fun! grrr...

Boone wrote:I was actually responding to thewizard. Comparing a multi-million dollar computer to a 386 isn't light hearted fun! grrr...

Sorry. Since I was the one who mentioned clusters and a bit of surprise that Cray is still around (both of which you addressed in your reply), I thought you were replying to me.

By the way, my surprise comes because I thought Cray Research was merged into SGI back in 1996. I didn't know they had been spun back off again.

cfitz

Boone wrote:The Red Storm project ( http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news- ... storm.html ) uses AMD Opteron processors, but it hasn't been announced what OS it will run.

Running Winblows XP....and all 4,096 processors and 65.5 TeraBytes of Ram, spitting out a Blue Screen of Death, at the rate of what? 52.5 teraflops! *lol*

Hey....my system itself spits out a few glops....like 7 or something I believe...so I can't export it. But then again, I'd never give up my G4....well... maybe for a dual processor one.

I say switch, but only if I can play Doom 3 on it
Maybe THAT system can play that game at a decent frame rate...

Yeah, SGI sold the Cray Research "assets" (meaning us employees and stuff) to Tera Computer Company, makers of the MTA (Multi-Threaded Architecture, similar to P4's HyperThreading but on a *much* larger scale), who promptly renamed themselves Cray Inc. So here we are!

Col. Panic: your G4 has a small vector unit in the CPU as well, and it's called "AltiVec". Too bad the memory bandwidth isn't great enough to sustain it. It's great for bursting things through there, but main memory can't keep it going. It's like having a large drain on your bathtub, and a small water nozzle. You can stop up the drain and fill up the tub, but once you start draining the water nozzle isn't fast enough to keep it filled and it eventually drains.

Aren't there two Cray companies? Cray Research and Cray Computer?
I thought that Seymore Cray quit and started the other Cray company?

And, um, have any of the Cray people tried loading some games on one of their supercomputers Hmm..Unreal 2K3, 2048x2048, 1,000,000 FPS

Damn blokes! This is the Beer Garden, it's supposed to be about fun and laughter! If you seriously think I have a beef against Cray as opposed to a 386 Linux machine then you are crazy! I was merely playing.

Apparently Boone didn't find it funny, but my only response to that is...I can't please everyone all the time. This is the forum where I can have fun, as opposed to the other forums which have been infiltrated by LiteOn Sucks and his meaningless dribble.

And to answer your question, glock20rocks, http://www.cray.com/company/history.html has a pretty good recount of the history, including Seymour Cray's role in the whole thing here http://www.cray.com/company/seymourcray.html

Boone, it's a very cool thing that you're employed by Cray; a lot of computer geeks, I am sure, would give their left arm to work for them.!

Is there even the remotest possibility that you can give us an idea of how fast any of the Cray systems can crank through a SETI@home work unit? I'm not sure if there's a client for a Cray system, I can only hope hehe! Better still ask someone to install the client and see for yourself

This would be interesting to know, as personally I have seen the performance difference it makes on a ordinary PC system, if you increase the FSB speed a notch or two, for processing a SETI work unit...