Sikorsky plays killer copter sim on SGI Altix UV 1000

Technically, a Silicon Graphics Altix UV 1000 could play Crysis, but in the case of the machine being installed at Sikorsky Aircraft, its game is more realistic: an advanced helicopter flight simulator to create things that really do blow stuff up. The Altix UV 1000 is, of course, the big gun in the SGI arsenal, able to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make sure there's no back doors

Just make sure there's no back doors - the last super-copter with a super-computer had a nasty one - had to freeze the whole thing out.

The Santini Air one...

[ssu]

Hope they have improved the delivery method

I had an evaluation SGI Iris Indigo and monitor turn up loose and unpackaged in a back of a white Ford Escort van. They were worth around £12k back in 1992. Lovely machine to use but not that quick with the software it was tested with.

[Volker Hett]

And which OS is it?

Windows 2008R2 or Linux?

[Michael Dunn]

@What OS?

I think IRIX is mentioned, SGI have been using IRIX since the year dot.

[Chemist]

SGI Altix UV

It's SUSE or Red Hat Linux or Windows that are available.

From SGI's website

"SGI UV runs unmodified versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 is also supported across the product line"

Not found any mention of IRIX

[Lars]

@What OS?

As far as I remember they gave up on IRIX for Linux. Running Windows means you can have a Windows partition on the Linux machine.

[Davidoff]

"I think IRIX is mentioned, SGI have been using IRIX since the year dot."

And IRIX is dead since almost half a decade now, as is the MIPS-based series of computers.

Today it's Linux all along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly meh

Back in 2007/8 the bank I work for set up a 5000 core grid with conservatively 20 TB of memory for one business area. And it was surprisingly cheap, considering. I should probably consider the setting up of a such a thing as an achievement! So, when I read articles like this I tend to think "meh" as I know there are many out those like out there. Show me a 100,000 core grid and I will pay attention...

You may hate banks, but they keep companies like AMD and Intel in business. It sounds arrogant, but I've looked at the server sales figures, and in one year I know just my business area accounted for about 60% of sales of a particular HP server. And that's where the real margins are made by the chip vendors.

[elsonroa]

Grid != Supercomputer

You missed the bit about this thing having a _shared memory_ of up to 16TB. That's 16TB of RAM which is directly addressable from any of the processors in the system. Grids are fine for embarassingly parallelisable problems, but there are certain applications which don't map well to grids and just need one big bastard of a computer. Obviously modelling the aerodynamics of helicopters must come into this category.

[Herby]

dream on, you can't have one

And by the way, unless you are Bill Gates, you probably can't afford it anyway.

Of course, you CAN build a chopper yourself, kits are available. On one of the satellite channels here in the USA they even had a series on how to do it. While something like the kit will go quickly, it probably won't break any speed limits, and will take a couple of minutes around Top Gear's test track (assuming it follows the road course).

[Robinson]

Errr

What do they program these things with? Occam?