Who wants to work on a 264-Core, 6TB RAM supercomputer?

This topic was created by Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor .

[Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor]

Who wants to work on a 264-Core, 6TB RAM supercomputer?

What could you do with 264 Intel Sandy Bridge Cores and 6TB of RAM?

As it happens, you can now try to find out: Perth's supercomputer facility iVEC has just asked for " would like to invite applications from the research community to use its new, large-memory computer system, called Zythos."

We've detailed just what is inside Zythos and the nature of the offer here. So get reading, then get commenting. There are still a few of Vulture South's very limited edition fridge magnets on offer for especially good ideas.

[miket82]

Re: Who wants to work on a 264-Core, 6TB RAM supercomputer?

Can I play pong on it with sound or is that tooooo much?

[Shadow Systems]

*Pavlovian Geeky Drooling*

I'd name it WOPPER and ask it to play games with me.

*Chortle*

...

On another note, what are all the unlabeled & undescribed Radio Buttons for between the post Text Entry Field & the Preview/Submit buttons?

Grab the person in charge of the UI & smash their head into the wall while reciting the W3C Accessibility Standards WRT improperly/unlabeled screen elements.

If you don't describe them, then anyone using a Screen Reader can't interact with them.

Fix it & I'll stop trying to tie your nipples to the back of a speeding bus, M'kay?

[WraithCadmus]

Re: *Pavlovian Geeky Drooling*

It's the icon selection, I took a look in Lynx and they are labelled there, is this something to do with the difference between alt and title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it provision to a VSAN?

Be careful with that. If the vCrowd sees it, they might want to run VSAN on it. It'll make it so much faster...

[DainB]

I have about 50 racks with around 500 cores and 6+TB of RAM and around 14TB of flash per rack and this is kinda commodity over here. So what is all fuss is about ?

[Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor]

Commodity? Where is "here". And is it open for others to access as this one will be?

[DainB]

Open - yes, you pay money and use it if you can afford it.

What I'm saying it's nothing special nowdays. Yeah, it'll cost you probably close to million dollars to buy one, but they're readily available on the market. So again - what all fuss is about ?

[Elwell]

The difference with Zythos (and other UV2000s) is that all the CPUs/memory is addressable as a single machine, not a cluster spread over multiple racks. It all depends what codes you need to run, and how they scale

(disclosure of interest: $dayjob)

[Anonymous Coward]

But will it run Crysis?

With details settings on Ultra all around?

Can it run a Windows Setup (tm) in "just a few minutes (tm)"?

Does it get a Windows Performance Index of 7.9, not counting on this:

http://www.blogsdna.com/4075/how-to-change-fake-windows-experience-index-on-windows-7.htm

I know 2012 called me and it wants its puny jokes back, but I had to ask.

Bulletproof Coat...

[Gartal]

Who wants to work on a 264-Core, 6TB RAM supercomputer

Well first of all I'd take it out to dinner, a nice quiet restaurant somewhere in the City, somewhere we can be assured some degree of anonymity. I'd ply it with reasonably priced wines, nothing to flash just enough to impress. Later we'd head off to an exclusive club, preferably a "Gentleman's Club" to admire some flesh and check out the dangly and wobbly bits.

Somewhere in there we would discuss the nature of the Universe, the Whichness of the Why, the How of the Now Brown Cow and the possibility of a Glurk Trolling.

Captain Kirk might be persuaded to stop by for a chat and to fuck something green.

Eventually, the evening would take it's toll and we would repair to my humble abode. Pushing open the front door, we would enter the darkened hallway. Mrs. Flittersnoop would be well and truly abed and we would gravitate toward the sitting room where we would sit primly discussing something in keeping with the lateness of the hour, like Pachabelle's Theorem in D Minor or D'ye ken tinkle plunk in his tinkle tinkle ding.

Having exhausted topics of decent conversation, we would head for the bedroom at which point I would decide to have the cat speyed.

[sanity hazard]

Optional?

I wonder how it would go mining Bitcoin\Dogecoin\pick-a-name-coin.

[Sanctimonious Prick]

Re: Optional?

Our project could be to test how many DGC can be mined in one day compared to how many BTC can be mined in one day?

Please credit all mined coins to my Vault at.... :D

[Pahhh]

Minecraft?

Minecraft server...

[Christian Berger]

Does that even count as a supercomputer any more?

I mean this is just "as much" as about 50 desktop computers (OK it has more RAM). I'd put it into the "midrange" category. Not something you'd predict the weather on, but something you'd use as an application server for 500 people.

[John Brookes]

Re: Does that even count as a supercomputer any more?

No, I wouldn't count it as a supercomputer any more... but....

This could be major boon for a researcher at a small institution struggling to cram in sufficient simulations using a threaded/OpenMP'd application on a workstation, or a miniscule amount of CPU time on the department's/intitution's resource..... Or a researcher whose papers stand a high chance of rejection due to their sims' low resolution (or other over-simplification of the system under study).... Or the researcher whose research is at an impasse because there's just not enough RAM to contain his/her system at all..... Or where IO requirements are so overwhelming that having (N<6)TB of RAM disk yields 10^x speedups.... or, or, or....

Sure, it's a publicity stunt, but it could be an invaluable one for a number of poor schmoes on the coalface of science....

[Denarius]

internet connectivity ?

would the latest Firefoxes run with adequate response times ?