"Cray Lands $200 Million Linux-Opteron SUper Deal"

It makes fun to see that some of the "intel supporters" shout out loud how 4-8 way servers aren't that "profitable" than 2s servers.

A few weeks ago, supercomputer maker Cray said that the next quarter or two might be a little bumpy, but that it was pretty confident that it would make its numbers for the year. And, apparently, with good reason. Yesterday, the company announced that it had landed a whopping $200 million deal to build an Opteron-based parallel supercomputer that runs a hyped-up version of Linux for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Whether or not this is the most powerful supercomputer in the world when it goes operational in 2008 or not remains to be seen, but this is the first commitment that any research institution or government has made to pay for a petaflops computer so far. There will, undoubtedly, be others, since the race is on to petaflops-scale computing. A petaflops is equivalent to 1,000 teraflops of number-crunching power, and it is about three times the performance of the current champion of the supercomputer set, the 367 teraflops BlueGene/L super at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A few weeks ago, supercomputer maker Cray said that the next quarter or two might be a little bumpy, but that it was pretty confident that it would make its numbers for the year. And, apparently, with good reason. Yesterday, the company announced that it had landed a whopping $200 million deal to build an Opteron-based parallel supercomputer that runs a hyped-up version of Linux for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Whether or not this is the most powerful supercomputer in the world when it goes operational in 2008 or not remains to be seen, but this is the first commitment that any research institution or government has made to pay for a petaflops computer so far. There will, undoubtedly, be others, since the race is on to petaflops-scale computing. A petaflops is equivalent to 1,000 teraflops of number-crunching power, and it is about three times the performance of the current champion of the supercomputer set, the 367 teraflops BlueGene/L super at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A few weeks ago, supercomputer maker Cray said that the next quarter or two might be a little bumpy, but that it was pretty confident that it would make its numbers for the year. And, apparently, with good reason. Yesterday, the company announced that it had landed a whopping $200 million deal to build an Opteron-based parallel supercomputer that runs a hyped-up version of Linux for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Whether or not this is the most powerful supercomputer in the world when it goes operational in 2008 or not remains to be seen, but this is the first commitment that any research institution or government has made to pay for a petaflops computer so far. There will, undoubtedly, be others, since the race is on to petaflops-scale computing. A petaflops is equivalent to 1,000 teraflops of number-crunching power, and it is about three times the performance of the current champion of the supercomputer set, the 367 teraflops BlueGene/L super at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Why do you care? What does this mean to you? Why should we drop everything we're doing just to entertain you, whether what you say is fact or crap?

Here's something: go away...

The world's first commercial one-petaflops supercomputer has been commissioned, Cray announced on Thursday.
Codenamed "Baker", the 24,000-socket, Opteron-based Linux system is due to be installed at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008. This will join existing Cray supercomputer systems to be used for research in neutron science, biological systems, energy production and advanced materials. the company said. It will also be available to outside companies such as Boeing, DreamWorks and Harvard University.

Cadence Design Systems, a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) software, and AMD, a leader in advanced microprocessor technology and products, will collaborate with Rensselaer and IBM at the Supercomputing Center in advanced simulation and modeling of nanoelectronic devices and circuitry. This activity complements the ongoing joint R&D activity between IBM and AMD in East Fishkill and Albany developing advanced high performance Silicon on Insulator (SOI) semiconductor devices and manufacturing processes.

The CCNI will focus on reducing the time and costs associated with designing and manufacturing nanoscale materials, devices, and systems.

“This new supercomputing center dedicated to nanotechnology will have global impact by finding innovative solutions to the challenges facing the continued productivity growth of the semiconductor industry and enabling key nanotechnology innovations in the fields of energy, biotechnology, arts, and medicine,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “We applaud Senator Bruno and IBM for their vision and commitment to expand technology research in New York state and across the globe.”

“This partnership between Rensselaer, IBM, and the state will create one of the world’s top 10 supercomputing centers, and the most powerful university-based supercomputing center anywhere,” said Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno. “Establishing this world-class science and technology research center has the power to transform the Capital Region into a high-tech destination. This collaboration will attract new business, support existing companies, and generate high-paying jobs in the region.”

“Current semiconductor technology is rapidly approaching its practical limits. New, nanotechnology-based technologies will be needed to sustain the productivity growth that the information technology industry provides to the world economy,” said John E. Kelly III, IBM’s senior vice president of technology and intellectual property. “We are delighted with New York’s and RPI’s continuing commitment to leadership in this important field. We also look forward to extending our collaboration with AMD and Cadence to innovate around the technical barriers our industry is facing.”

What's wrong guys? Didn't like the article??
All I get is Fanboy-crying instead of good posts that talks about the topic. 8)

Anyhow, here I brought more stuff to keep some of the fanboys crying out loud.

www.zdnet.com
The world's first commercial one-petaflops supercomputer has been commissioned, Cray announced on Thursday.
Codenamed "Baker", the 24,000-socket, Opteron-based Linux system is due to be installed at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008. This will join existing Cray supercomputer systems to be used for research in neutron science, biological systems, energy production and advanced materials. the company said. It will also be available to outside companies such as Boeing, DreamWorks and Harvard University.

Cadence Design Systems, a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) software, and AMD, a leader in advanced microprocessor technology and products, will collaborate with Rensselaer and IBM at the Supercomputing Center in advanced simulation and modeling of nanoelectronic devices and circuitry. This activity complements the ongoing joint R&D activity between IBM and AMD in East Fishkill and Albany developing advanced high performance Silicon on Insulator (SOI) semiconductor devices and manufacturing processes.

The CCNI will focus on reducing the time and costs associated with designing and manufacturing nanoscale materials, devices, and systems.

“This new supercomputing center dedicated to nanotechnology will have global impact by finding innovative solutions to the challenges facing the continued productivity growth of the semiconductor industry and enabling key nanotechnology innovations in the fields of energy, biotechnology, arts, and medicine,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “We applaud Senator Bruno and IBM for their vision and commitment to expand technology research in New York state and across the globe.”

“This partnership between Rensselaer, IBM, and the state will create one of the world’s top 10 supercomputing centers, and the most powerful university-based supercomputing center anywhere,” said Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno. “Establishing this world-class science and technology research center has the power to transform the Capital Region into a high-tech destination. This collaboration will attract new business, support existing companies, and generate high-paying jobs in the region.”

“Current semiconductor technology is rapidly approaching its practical limits. New, nanotechnology-based technologies will be needed to sustain the productivity growth that the information technology industry provides to the world economy,” said John E. Kelly III, IBM’s senior vice president of technology and intellectual property. “We are delighted with New York’s and RPI’s continuing commitment to leadership in this important field. We also look forward to extending our collaboration with AMD and Cadence to innovate around the technical barriers our industry is facing.”

With an extensive IT infrastructure based on SAP software, CLP Power Hong Kong found itself faced with multiple challenges when it tried to update its software and hardware and improve its speed in delivering customer-focused marketing campaigns. The answer came in a migration to an x86-based, 64-bit server platform.

"We began having problems with our SAP system where we had programs terminating because they were out of memory do to the limitations of traditional 32-bit server platforms," says Andre Blumberg, technology and architecture manager for CLP, a provider of electricity power generation, distribution, and retail services to 2.2 million customers in Hong Kong.

Simultaneously, CLP was looking to complete upgrades to several of its SAP implementations and was preparing for a normal five-year replacement cycle for its associated servers.

When CLP began looking at this issue three years ago, Blumberg understood that problems associated with its SAP implementations were tied primarily to memory limitations inherent in the 32-bit processors used in its servers. The 32-bit processors had memory addressability limited to 3 gigabytes, insufficient for many of the SAP applications. Blumberg also knew that 64-bit processors offered virtually unlimited memory addressability. The problem was a lack of alternatives if CLP was going to remain a Windows-based enterprise.

The only readily available alternative was Intel's newest architecture, the 64-bit Itanium. Working with Hewlett-Packard, CLP deployed some test platforms using an Itanium-based server, and experienced good results. "We were actually quite bullish about moving forward with Itanium," Blumberg says.

The problem was cost. Itanium-based servers and associated technology such as disk drives were five to six times greater in price than those used with Intel's Xeon-based servers. Xeon, however, was a 32-bit processor architecture, and Intel had not indicated it had any intentions of moving the processor to a 64-bit implementation.

About two years ago, Advanced Micro Devices began offering dual-core 64-bit Opteron processors, providing a new option that CLP was quick to investigate. Working with HP, AMD, and SAP, CLP was able to get an early version of a four-way server utilizing Opteron processors.

"We put a copy of one of our data mining applications onto a beta version of the platform and were quite amazed at the performance difference," he says. "There was a huge jump."

CLP regularly runs data mining jobs to create simulations of power consumption based on correlations between specific census data, income distribution, or other factors to create targeted marketing campaigns. The simulations could take seven to eight hours on 32-bit systems. With the 64-bit AMD systems the simulations were completed in less than an hour.

CLP has completed 60% of its move to HP servers based on AMD Opteron processors for its SAP environment and will finish the move over the next 12 months.

"Woodcrest looks quite good on paper," Blumberg says. "But we are not going to do anything based on the flavor of the day. This is not a fashion show where we change servers every three months. We will certainly continue to make evaluations going forward."