Student and Professor Build Budget Supercomputer 387
Luke writes "This past winter Calvin College professor Joel Adams and then Calvin senior Tim Brom built Microwulf, a portable supercomputer with 26.25 gigaflops peak performance, that cost less than $2,500 to construct, becoming the most cost-efficient supercomputer anywhere that Adams knows of. "It's small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk," said Brom. Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own."
heat buildup issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
B.
the google way (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about the possibilities, not the technology (Score:5, Interesting)
While it does not have the interconnect of "true HPC" hardware (a bit of a fleeting distinction, but bear with me) it'll surely be suitable for a lot of the simpler, yet still compute-intensive tasks out there ("simple" here meaning not needing a lot of intra-node communication).
On the flip side, it might fuel the "hell, I'll just build my own cluster"-mentality going around these days. I work in the HPC group at a university, running linux clusters, IBM "big iron" and a couple of small, old SGI installation, and we certainly see a bit of that going around. Problem is, sure, the hardware is cheap and affordable, but getting it to run in a stable and sensible manner without spending large amounts of time just keeping the thing together is a challenge, mainly due to the immature state of clustering software. As many researchers are not exactly keen on spending time solving problems outside their specific field, they're usually better off letting somebody else administer things, so they can just log on and run their stuff.
But for individuals and small groups of people who are computer savvy enough to handle it, things like these are definately a "good thing" (TM).
Re:Actually... Microwulf might well be revolutiona (Score:2, Interesting)
The more computing power is available in the world, the less it will be used to its potential. If everyone had an Earth Simulator in their basement, how much of that power would be wasted?
Not saying that proliferation of computers is bad, just food for thought.
-:sigma.SB
P.S. SETI@home, Folding@home, etc. are cheating. :P
4 psus, isn't that a waste? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at this design: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/ [mini-itx.com]. It uses DC-DC converters on each motherboards (mini-itx, so low power), a single 12V PSU and a UPS for regulation:
GigaFlops (Score:5, Interesting)
Wussywulf? (Score:3, Interesting)
Less powerful than a single Clovertown (Score:1, Interesting)
Newbie translation please? (Score:1, Interesting)
If the bus speed is 1 Ghz x 32 bit, doesn't that mean that the whole computer is limited to 1.3 gigaflops at best (need to move at least 96 bits to perform a FlOp?), or even less if a lot of data has to travel over the 1GBit ethernet:
I know I am clueless, sorry, but that's how I learn. THanks for your help.
Re:not so impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)
Others have pointed out that this is useful for tasks where the interconnect speed doesn't matter. I'll point out that the first "node" only costs $765, and the next seven are $564 each (then you need a bigger switch). Of course, the 8-way version won't fit in an airplane's overhead luggage compartment anymore. You might want to add a UPS.
I seem to recall a post earlier this year about some other university building something similar using two quad-core CPUs on each motherboard. Their version, too, wouldn't fit over your seat, as it stood about six feet tall. Hmmm, either Slashdot nor Google can find anything, but I thought it used a frame built of pine 2x2s.
BTW, is there a benchmark you have to pass to get called a supercomputer? Why couldn't someone grab a bunch of three-year-old desktops that are due to be junked and tie them together for a shot at the title of cheapest supercomputer? Do those ad hoc arrays that the animation studios re-build for every movie count?
Re:How does it compare to a PS3? (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect the design is very well suited to clustering. The PPUs handle all the data dispatching & balancing with the SPUs left to do the leg work.
Re:How does it compare to a PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:the google way (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:On an airplane? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the google way (Score:3, Interesting)
I've often wondered the same myself. Sure, you can get some speed optimizations by running a slimmed-down wire protocol over the Ethernet, but it's intuitive that any additional hardware between nodes adds latency. Unless NIC hardware is essential for something like buffering, I'd think some sort of PCI bridging driver would be much better suited for this sort of setup.
If anyone's heard of anything like this please share. I'm off to do some more Googling for it myself.
-S
Re:the google way (Score:3, Interesting)
GPU based supercomputing (Score:3, Interesting)
The basic Tesla unit c870 = 518 Giga flops for ~$1300.
Tesla s870 = 2 Terra flop for ~$12000 (still desktop size)
NVidia Tesla [nvidia.com]
not trying to flame but .. (Score:2, Interesting)
I code for systems with 800 4 Optron nodes, with 10GB/s interconnect, and a couple hundred terabytes of SAN attached storage. That is a supercomputer :) Well sort of, a lot of people in the HPC community consider it just a cluster, as some programs need 64+ CPU's in SMP mode, so any loosely coupled memory model would be considered a serial farm :)
Also, note that high end platforms, would have redundant power, redundant high end interconnects, redundant hot swap drives etc. There also would be enough of them to need, high end switches, blowers, power conditioners, air circularators, and various other room coolers. Of course a custom built workstation without a graphics card, monitor, or even case is going to beat the pants off of HPC architecture price per flop, good work to the group, but hardly newsworthy in the HPC community.