Mainframe CPU question

There's a cheap one on this page. Only four hundred thousand dollars. Let me know if you get it ... I may rent some time from you.

<A HREF="http://www.tech-news.com/publib/pl9672g5.htm" target="_new">http://www.tech-news.com/publib/pl9672g5.htm&lt;/A>


Toejam31

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847&lt;/A>

Mainframes no longer exist- in the sense your thinking. Since the invention of the microprocessor- mainframes have become antiquated and have outlived their usefulness. Cray is considered the king of mainframes. DEC was quite popular too. SGI (Silicon Graphics) also make superclusters for graphics.

What essentially replaced mainframes were superclusters of microprocessors (hundreds of processors linked together to perform massive tasks). That's probably the closest thing to a mainframe- in terms of computing power. You'll notice companies like NASA, Boeing, and other engineering companies now just buy superclusters of Athlon CPU's, Sun SPARCs, Alpha's, and Pentium 2/3's, MIPs, and IBM's RS/6000 based CPU's. I've read that some really old Cray's are still in use at the IRS, FBI, and other govt. agencies. But, probably only because of the software they run.

<A HREF="http://www.cray.com/news/0101/sc.html" target="_new">http://www.cray.com/news/0101/sc.html&lt;/A>
There's a link to Cray's website on plans to build an Alpha based supercluster.

<A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/UserInfo/Resources/Hardware/NT..." target="_new">http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/UserInfo/Resources/Hardware/NT...;/A>
There's some specs on a supercluster developed by NCSA.

<A HREF="http://www.sgi.com/origin/3000/" target="_new">http://www.sgi.com/origin/3000/&lt;/A>
There's a picture of SGI's Origin 3000 supercluster- probably one of the most powerful superclusters available.

<A HREF="http://lwn.net/2001/0315/a/amd-boeing.php3" target="_new">http://lwn.net/2001/0315/a/amd-boeing.php3&lt;/A>
There's a link to the Athlon supercluster developed for Boeing.



-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

not strictly true.

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

When are the Itanium clusters coming. Since a couple of people have claimed that the IA64 could Produce Human AI in a supercluster.

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... :smile: Yummy :smile:

Mainframs in the true sense nowadays are not massively powerful cpu based systems.

A mainframe is constructed of a series of highly optimised peripherals and core processing architecture all designed to be self sustaining.

So where we think of a cpu running disk io, printing, gui, application etc, the core of a mainframe just runs basic application calculation and OS. All the peripherals, disk, comms, i/o, etc. are relatively self sustaining components. This means that your disk drive itself is a pretty intelligent device that requires little control or maintanance by the central processor - it is all handled through local subroutines. This leaves the central cpu essentially free to do what it needs to - process data. It also means that uptime and stability are paramount, since the amount of central code running is so much drastically lower.

Mainframes are not good at complex 3D mappings, theoretical nuclear blast simulations etc. what they do very well is finance and banking. Stupendous levels of reliability and uptime, very good basic financial calculating ability and the capability to scale out to very large systems. They have phenominal running costs and incredible levels of QA and change control assosiated with them. Think of any component in a mainframe and you are usually talking 6 figures. An IBM FEP (Front Edge Processor - or user IO module to you and I) can be anything from $1,000,000+.

What is more glamourous - as is mentioned above - are the MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) machines and clusters, where 64+ cpus get together in 1 or more chassis and have a good old think about the world. These are the guys that simulate the big bang, nuclear explosions and such.

Hope this helps a little.

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

yeah, thank everybody for the info. I decided to get a SUPER PC, you know, the ones that are underground for military stuff, NASA may use those. They are cheap and good, maybe 300 times more expensive than the most expensive mainframe, but to me it is like a peny (oh I wish it was not a joke, I'd be SO happy) I mean what is 10,000,000,000,000 nowadays? nada..

Hmmm

One terrabyte of memory... not bad
512 processors... not too shabby

I'll stick with my duron : )

In my opinion, the Itanium is behind the power curve. 64bit CPU's have been out for a long time now and Intel is just now getting to it. Blah. I'll bet a Sun SPARC cluster can do just as well as a Itanium cluster. =)

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

<A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/20117.html" target="_new">http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/20117.html&lt;/A>

There's a AMD supercluster ranked 439 out of the top 500 most powerful clusters.

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

And who's going to program that?  

But thanks, I feel a bit smarter, suddenly.

------------------------------
Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?

If everything goes according to theory, in a
few years you should see some seriously powerful
computers from <A HREF="http://www.starbridgesystems.com/index.html" target="_new">These Guys</A> using <A HREF="http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?..." target="_new">These Processors</A>.
Imagine your computer being optimized for
running each and every app on the fly.
Since SETI@Home is just number-crunching
taken to extremes, the FPGA could turn itself
into a hundred (nano?)processors capable
of executing the integer/floating point
instructions and not wasting silicon real estate
on graphics or word processing.

Flame not, lest ye be flamed.

~I'll bet a Sun SPARC cluster can do just as well as a Itanium cluster~

Sun has done 64 bit for 6 years, Intel are just beginning. Based purely on the following Intel tests the Itanium must be pretty bad. They only compared it to the UltraSPARCIII on a couple of tests, it changed to UltraSPARCII on others so they didn't keep underperforming.

<A HREF="http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/ia64/overview/b... " target="_new">http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/ia64/overview/b... </A>

This is the ultimate stretch in trying to make your processor look good. UltraSPARCIII is currently the killer 64bit CPU.

Alpha was good but is now on its death bed. It will take some time for Itanium to grow up, Compaq is betting on Itanium2, for now it's just playtime.



<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>