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Windows Breaks Into Supercomputer Top 10
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Nov 19, 2008 05:02 PM
from the adversity-breeds-strength-in-redmond-too dept.
from the adversity-breeds-strength-in-redmond-too dept.
yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."
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New Top 500 Supercomputer List 138 comments
geaux and other readers let us know that the new Top 500 Supercomputer list is out. The top two both break the Petaflops barrier: LANL's IBM "RoadRunner" and ORNL's Cray XT5 "Jaguar." (Contrary to our discussion a few days back, IBM's last-minute upgrade of RoadRunner salvaged the top spot for Big Blue. Kind of like bidding on eBay.) The top six all run in excess of 400 Teraflops. HP has more systems in the top 500 than IBM, reversing the order of the previous list. Both Intel and AMD issued press releases crowing over their wins, and both are correct — AMD highlights its presence in 7 of the top 10, while Intel boasts that 379 of the top 500 use their chips.
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Yeah, mut how much useful stuff is happening? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Can you imagine a botnet of those?
I can.
Parent
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
actually,
40% Funny
30% Insightful
20% Overrated
-- i agree with about 20% of people, a botnet run with windows would be overrated compared to one run off another system, its just quicker to build a windows one.
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Re:Yeah, mut how much useful stuff is happening? (Score:5, Funny)
FLOPS and MIPS are all very well, but if the OS is pissing them away then it does not matter much.
(Interviewing MS HPC Program Manager)
"Well, yeah it does stuff! Just look. You've got it all right here...Word, Excel, even Access. And just wait until you see how fast the cards fly when you win Solitaire!"
Parent
The OS is very important (Score:5, Insightful)
It is one thing to measure Drystones etc, or some other simple grunt-measuring metric, but that does not realistically stress the OS's influence on how the system will perform on huge complex number crunching models.
Microsoft has only been in this game for a short time and only recently got support for 256 cores. Getting support is one thing, getting **good**, optimised, support is quite another and that will take some time to get right.
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Re:The OS is very important (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has only been in this game for a short time and only recently got support for 256 cores. Getting support is one thing, getting **good**, optimised, support is quite another and that will take some time to get right.
I would argue that NT as a server platform is older than Linux as a server platform. I remember it being noted in a CS text book about the far higher SQL performance on Microsoft and Solaris systems when compared to linux, for instance, and that having much to do with the system architecture. I believe people use it because it's more optimized and has a more efficient underlying architecture. At NCSA, which is down the street from me, they run a pretty serious Windows HPC 2008 cluster, and they have very good things to say about its performance compared to the linux systems. The deployment time is also another plus, which is really remarkable for a cluster. One of the biggest issues, though, is issue resolution. When they have some sort of issue (don't let your windows 98 imaginations run wild, I am talking about little hiccups here) Microsoft usually has a hotfix or patch out in hours. The problem resolution and support positively topple any linux distribution and even Sun.
I would say that Windows HPC 2008 will be a pretty serious offering for small businesses that prefer to use easier to maintain Windows-based IT infrastructures. With enough time in cluster computing, they'll probably start picking up more enterprise customers as well. It's really nothing to laugh at-- it's the only solid non-unix offering, which is a big step ahead for companies not trapped in the 70's technology-wise.
Maybe with this global economic crisis, more companies will embrace this technology in order to cut IT and support overhead. You can crunch the numbers on a team of unix guys versus a couple of NT guys and a license. Support and effective administration infrastructure goes a long way. I think Microsoft is going to take back some of this market where Linux got ahead because Microsoft simply had no comparable offering.
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Re:Yeah, mut how much useful stuff is happening? (Score:5, Interesting)
considering that FLOPS refers to the number of floating point operations the processor can perform per second, which would be the same regardless of what OS a system is running, i would have to say that your guess is incorrect.
also, considering that most supercomputers are actually supercomputing clusters, the "supercomputer" in question is probably running more than just a single instance of the OS. since the Dawning 5000A uses Quadcore Opteron processors, and is listed as having 30720 cores, it should have 7680 processors. and since Windows Server 2008 can only use 8 processors (i think HPC is limited to 4), the 5000A must have at minimum 960 nodes. and since each node would be running its own instance of Windows HPC, the Dawning 5000A must be running at least 960 instances of Windows.
i don't know how Windows HPC compares to Linux or other OSes, but running a bloated OS on a supercomputing cluster would definitely have a large impact on its real world performance.
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Re:Yeah, mut how much useful stuff is happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
The FLOPS are measured by a benchmark program, The Linpack Benchmark [top500.org] that runs under OS overhead, so it would differ with different OSes and probably different configuration parameters in the same OS. I wouldn't be surprized if MS hadn't supplied significant engineering support to get the system tweeked to the T to nail down good numbers on the benchmark suite.
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Retarded (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, why would anyone want to roll-out something like this on Windows. A lot of extra expense for little practical value.
there are lots of Windows developers out there. (Score:4, Informative)
That is, programmers who are familiar with Windows more than other systems.
And Microsoft is also looking to roll out a new language that is supposed to make parallel programming much easier for those programmers.
If it works, there would be a LOT more apps that take advantage of these systems.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:there are lots of Windows developers out there. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible, even if not entirely likely.
Developing a language and compiler that takes advantage of multiple CPUs (especially if it's scaling the number of CPUs) is something that a lot of research (or money). MS does have this. Whether they use it effectively is another matter.
Also, remember that they are not unfamiliar with HPC abstraction. Direct3D abstracts the architecture of the GPU, and GPUs have been parallel processors for a decade or so.
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Re:there are lots of Windows developers out there. (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is they've missed the boat. Linux already has compilers for multiple CPUs
Look at this chart..
http://www.top500.org/stats/list/32/os [top500.org]
Windows HPC 2008 is on 4 machines out of 500. (+1 is windows 2003 if you want to count that)
Linux is on 454 out of 500 super computers
Which Operating System do you think is going to have better tools to support Super Computing?
Also I am hoping you mentioned Direct3D as to get a point across and you're not suggesting that Direct3D be used on these machines?
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Re:there are lots of Windows developers out there. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, actually. There are many concurrency projects for .NET. Take a look at declarative languages like F#, PLINQ (parallel LINQ), Parallel C#, Polyphonic C#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_programming_language [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLINQ [wikipedia.org]
http://www.parallelcsharp.com/ [parallelcsharp.com]
http://research.microsoft.com/~nick/polyphony/ [microsoft.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does not compute. M$ is not for HPC. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is wrong with " M$ "?
Nothing is wrong with "M$", in the same sense that nothing is wrong with someone referring to Linux as "linsux" and open-source as "open-sores". The thing is, it tends to make you look somewhat immature.
If you can present a compelling coherent argument, you don't need to use lame decade old snipes about whatever subject matter you are discussing. If you use them in a compelling argument, it usually just makes the people you are out to persuade have a lesser opinion of what you wrote, and thus, you have sacrificed persuasive power.
It comes down to maturity for the most part and just simply putting forward a good argument.
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Re:Retarded (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, Microsoft has an interesting idea here, to integrate a high performance computer installation with Windows client software such as Excel. Of course, there's no reason at all the back end supercomputer has to be running Windows, other than the fact that Microsoft will sell you the complete software stack, presumably through system integrators.
Frankly, I don't see why you'd want to do that, but obviously this is out of the box thinking. Maybe they see some application area for this, such as financial services, that is untapped, although if that's the case their timing is not fortuitous...
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Re:Retarded (Score:5, Funny)
Did you ever see the hippos [youtube.com] doing the Dance of the Hours in Disney's Fantasia? It's like that.
Parent
Re:Retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
Flagship demo projects like this often get exceedingly big discounts from the vendors.
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Re:Retarded (Score:4, Funny)
Now wouldn't it be awesome if they wiped Windows and install Linux after all the PR people leave?
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Re:Retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to defend Microsoft, but...
Crap hardware support? Who cares - you're running numerical calculations, not a bloody game on some tossy video card.
Crap vendor support? This vendor will have been given full support by Microsoft, and will be equally supportive of their users.
Performance? They're in the top 10.
Stability? If you're not dealing with odd hardware / crappy drivers, Windows Server versions are actually fairly stable.
Why not run your compute nodes under Windows?
You can actually run Windows Server 2000 and above headless, removing any GUI overhead - so why not?
I still agree that on any particular hardware configuration, Linux or another *nix will likely be faster, but your experience of desktop applications doesn't necessarily translate to HPC.
Parent
Re:Retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
Development tools. Something Microsoft is very, very, good at.
Microsoft development tools are in the category "If this helps you, you are not qualified for this job to begin with". An equivalent would be multiplication table on mathematician's desk or marathon runner on crutches.
Parent
All I read was "Windows Breaks"... (Score:5, Funny)
...and I thought "hey, that's not news. I've known that for years!"
Helping power the Great Firewall of China! (Score:5, Funny)
Arming the "Golden Shield" project with comprehensive IT technology
With the rapid development of the Internet, the public security information construction has become an important component of national information construction. Dawning made contributions in improving information technology level within all of the public security departments, arming the "Golden Shield" project with information technology, equipping the "police" force with digitalization, intensifying the police by technology and comprehensively raising China public security's law enforcement and administrative capacity.
I like how they quote "police" force.
Cost per MIP or how many CALs (Score:5, Interesting)
So how many CALs are required to access the system?
And if I want to make the system available to a different researcher every 2 hours how much is it going to cost them to be license compliant?
How much cpu power am I going to need to compute the licensing costs?
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sam/lic_cal.mspx
From the article, pricing is (Score:5, Informative)
"With the release of HPC Server 2008 a few weeks ago, Microsoft also offered an academic version priced at $15 per node to generate interest. By comparison, a commercial license runs $450 per node"
Parent
Re:From the article, pricing is (Score:5, Insightful)
Each node probably has 4 CPUs and 4 cores each, which reduces the price significantly, to only $28 for the commercial version, or about a dollar per node for the academic version.
That's not bad. And of course you don't understand the CALs, but hey, making erroneous statements can get you modded insightful so maybe I should spout something disingenuous about Linux, like it costs $699 to license it from SCO or something.
(For the uninformed, not all CALs are created equally and the parent is assuming that these are named licenses that must be purchased for each user. Many different kinds of CALs exist, and I suspect these are either physical unit licenses or concurrent access licenses, i.e.: you purchase 1 per node, period.)
Parent
Re:From the article, pricing is (Score:4, Interesting)
(For the uninformed, not all CALs are created equally and the parent is assuming that these are named licenses that must be purchased for each user. Many different kinds of CALs exist, and I suspect these are either physical unit licenses or concurrent access licenses, i.e.: you purchase 1 per node, period.)
From an IT management perspective this is one of the biggest BS headaches around.
CEO - 'So you have to pay extra to connect to the server even after you paid for the server software'
IT - 'Yes $35 dollars per seat or we could go by server connection'
CEO - 'So it's simple then we just multiply number of employees by number by $35'
IT = 'No, it's by connection. If a computer is connecting to a server it needs a call or the server needs a CAL for a connection. We need to figure out which is cheaper for us. Has nothing to do with whether a person is using the computer. Here's an estimate'
CEO - 'Holy crap, okay be done with it'.
IT - 'Well we have got to decide if we want everyone to have full access to the Exchange Server'
CEO - 'Well multiply by $35 and be done with it'
IT - 'Well that's more like $75 to $100 depending on how many CALS we get'.
Ad nauseam explaining all the different CALS and different licensing options.
Actually how the conversation got started was by handing the 3 required quotes to Purchasing. Three different prices from three different Certified MS vendors. None able to totally explain why they differed and all willing to say we would be compliant if we purchased these.
The question which came back was why do 4 $475 dollar servers end up costing us $7000.
Then we got into client and office suite licensing OEM vs non-OEM.
But basically they studied and learned in depth enough about it that NT4 was the last server version purchased.
So basically if they had only required a $699 license to SCO we would probably be still using Windows Servers.
So while MS classes fill the young techies head with knowledge on CALs, other OS classes are concentrating on different protocols and how email servers, web servers, dhcp servers
We kind of find more pride in fixing the problem, and less in endurance phone calls to MS tech support,and intricate knowledge of MS licensing options.
Parent
McColo (Score:5, Funny)
Shortly after coming online, they noticed that it broke a speed record downloading "instructions" from abilena.podolsk-mo.ru
You get so excited about your new supercomputer... (Score:4, Funny)
Off topic, but I have to mention it (Score:5, Insightful)
edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops
Emphasis mine.
Maybe I'm suffering from a case of advancing years, but I couldn't help but be amazed by this metric. These days it is indeed small, but another part of me remembers being a fifteen year old kid amazed at how absolutely great his C64 was.
I wonder exactly how many years a C64 would have to run to make up a single seconds worth of that difference. How long would a C64 have to run to perform 600 Gflop? How long would every single C64 ever made have to run? I wonder.
You'd have to run some integer-only 6502 IEEE floating point library or something like that to figure out how long a single floating point operation would take on the C64. Then multiply by 600G.
Would it be a few years? A few millenia? Blue-green algae?
Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, just because I'm strange I had to go and figure it out.
A C64, according to this guy [canberra.edu.au] runs at about 320 flops.
So, it would take that C64 600*10^9 / 320 = 1,875,000,000 seconds. That's 59.46 years.
Wiki says there were 30 million C64 units ever made. [wikipedia.org]
So that would be 1,875,000,000 seconds / 30,000,000 = 62.5 seconds.
It would take every single C64 ever made about a minute to make up the difference.
Wow.
Crap I'm old. =)
Parent
Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it (Score:5, Interesting)
A C64, according to this guy runs at about 320 flops.
That just can't be. I remember the Programmer's Reference Manual showing most normal instructions finishing in 2 or 3 clocks, or maybe 350,000 IPS. I can't imagine that FLOPS would be 1,000 times slower than other opcodes. I mean, I'm pretty certain I could re-implement them in assembler in many fewer than 1,000 instructions.
Parent
Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
No doubt HPC will be a requirement... (Score:4, Funny)
to run Windows 7.
the power of 100,000 BSODs at once (Score:4, Funny)
and 500 screens showing "allow or deny?"
Hopefully, HP will like this (Score:5, Funny)
For once, a computer that deserves the "Vista capable" sticker.
It's all about the benjamins, baby (Score:3)
Potentially bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of years ago I was surprised when one of my HPC customers issued a press release saying that their machine ran Windows HPC. The high-speed interconnect we'd sold them had no Windows drivers. You can guess what was going on: MicroSoft paid for the press release, and the machine actually ran Linux.
Dawning's previous fast machine ran Linux.
Re:Potentially bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
What is most interesting to me is that in the case of HPC, the situation between Windows and Linux is reversed. Linux has overwhelming market share in HPC, compared to Windows status as a niche player (and that is being generous). Despite this fact, Microsoft regularly gets fawning coverage in the media for their HPC efforts, far more than they should be if you consider their marketshare. It's like PC Magazine going on and on about all the latest developments in the Linux desktop market.
Parent
Re:Potentially bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Had to be a break-in... (Score:4, Funny)
nobody in their right mind would let Windows in willingly.
Windows systems are in top500 are declining (Score:5, Informative)
What's missing in the article is that there are only a few windows-based systems in the top500 and there numbers have been declining over the years.
Norton Antivirus Score? (Score:4, Funny)
An attempt to artificially inflate my linux ego: (Score:5, Interesting)
#10 on the list uses a AMD x86_64 Opteron Quad Core @ 1900 MHz and has 30720 cores and pumps out 180600 GFlops.
#8 on the list uses a AMD x86_64 Opteron Quad Core @ 2100 MHz and has 30976 cores and pumps out 205000 GFlops.
#10 runs windows, #8 runs linux.
Working through this: Gflops/# of cores/Mhz per core I get:
#10 with 3.094 Gflops/Mhz and #8 with 3.151 Gflop/Mhz
This leaves the linux machine getting 57 more KFlops per Mhz than the windows box.
disclaimer: Totally useless mental farking, without knowing more about the systems other components and more about the processor generations it's silly to assume the 57 KFlops is purely due to the OS, but hey, it's windows and everyone loves an easy target. :D
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:i must (Score:5, Funny)
But does it run Linux?
Parent
Re:Penis (Score:4, Funny)
Did they measure the performance with or without effect of antivirus software?
(parent comment unrelated)
Parent
Vista Capable (Score:4, Funny)
And even *that* computer doesn't run Vista...
(yeah, I know, but still)
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