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Unholy Matrimony? Microsoft and Cray

Posted by timothy on Tue Sep 16, 2008 12:47 PM
from the sick-of-so-called-supercomputers-running-linux dept.
Supercomputing Microsoft Hardware
fetusbear writes with a ZDNet story that says "'Microsoft and Cray are set to unveil on September 16 the Cray CX1, a compact supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008. The pair is expected to tout the new offering as "the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered," with pricing starting at $25,000.' Although this would be the lowest cost hardware ever offered by Cray, it would also be the most expensive desktop ever offered by Microsoft."
microsoft supercomputing hardware vista bsod
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Firehose:Microsoft and Cray, an unholy matrimony by fetusbear (711223)
[+] Cray's CX1 Desktop Supercomputer, Now For Sale 236 comments
ocularb0b writes "Cray has announced the CX1 desktop supercomputer. Cray teamed with Microsoft and Intel to build the new machine that supports up to 8 nodes, a total of 64 cores and 64Gb of memory per node. CX1 can be ordered online with starting prices of $25K, and a choice of Linux or Windows HPC. This should be a pretty big deal for smaller schools and scientists waiting in line for time on the world's big computing centers, as well as 3D and VFX shops."
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  • I mean, come on, this thing's probably gotta play some pretty good games....

    Let's see Toms Hardware and Anandtech put one of these babies through their paces!

    My question is, how big does your Word document have to be for it to take a second to scroll from the top to the bottom of the document.

  • The Microsoft Tax (Score:5, Funny)

    by Serenissima (1210562) on Tuesday September 16, @12:49PM (#25026935)
    Man, now even with buying a supercomputer we have to pay the Microsoft tax. We should sign a petition for them to sell the computers with Linux on them. Then we can drop the price to $24,900. That's WAY better.

    • Re:The Microsoft Tax (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, @01:23PM (#25027455)

      Actually, if you go to the Cray site and configure a system, it is available with Red Hat Linux for no cost (getting HPC adds $469)

  • Antivirus (Score:5, Funny)

    by tsa (15680) on Tuesday September 16, @12:50PM (#25026961) Homepage

    I bet Symantec Antivirus can get it on its knees.

  • This thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kidde_valind (1060754) on Tuesday September 16, @12:51PM (#25026979)
    ...is not actually a "desktop". It's not even "a" computer. It's a cluster, and Cray could definately do better than this. Especially considering Unisys has built computers (no, not clusters) with a lot of processors a long time, many of them Windows Capable. So... Cray builds a cluster, Microsoft gets some free ad space for HPC Server. Hooray!

    • Re:This thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fishbulb (32296) on Tuesday September 16, @01:25PM (#25027479)

      Yes Cray could do better, but the Cray of today is not the Cray of yesterday.

      It's as close to 'in-name-only' as you can get, considering the number of times it's been bought off and fleeced.

      • Re:This thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by clodney (778910) on Tuesday September 16, @02:31PM (#25028475)

        Because by saying it runs Windows, they are implicitly defining the development tools and APIs that it supports.

        So an organization that has Windows devs but needs more horsepower is likely to turn to this before looking at a Beowolf cluster.

        Now, writing massively parallel code is admittedly a different skill set than writing ordinary desktop or web development, but starting with the same tools and environments gives them at least a head start.

  • Non-useless link (Score:5, Informative)

    by hcdejong (561314) <h.c.de.jong@x[ ]et.nl ['msn' in gap]> on Tuesday September 16, @12:58PM (#25027063)

    instead of bloggy blather, you can go to the source [cray.com].

  • Poor Seymour (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LWATCDR (28044) on Tuesday September 16, @01:00PM (#25027101) Homepage Journal

    The man is spinning in his grave!
    Just let Cray pass into history.

  • And yes, here's a couple jokes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Captain Spam (66120) on Tuesday September 16, @01:05PM (#25027173) Homepage

    Everyone else has probably done the usual "how fast can a Cray show a BSoD?" gags, so all I was left with was:

    • "It looks like you're trying to solve complex multidimensional calculus to model atomic explosions! Need some help?"
    • "Hi, I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC. And here's my 30-foot-tall friend, Big Cray, The Destroyer of Worlds. Kill, Big Cray, Kill!"

      • Re:No so, it can run vista smoothly, if... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hedwards (940851) on Tuesday September 16, @01:05PM (#25027167)

        I beg to differ, I was running it just fine with only 512mb or ram on a 2.39ghz celeron processor. Once I turned off all the eye candy there were no performance issues.

        It's probably the only case I can think of where the minimum requirements were at all realistic.

    • You have to realize that communication between nodes in a cluster of off the shelf PCs is going to be much slower than the inter-node communication channels used in a Cray.

      Any work that requires a lot of communication will always run faster on a real supercomputer versus a cluster of PCs. There will always be a niche for Cray, but their prices will continue to go up as more and more of their repeat customers realize they don't really need what they're getting.

    • Re:Too dinosaurs working together. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by flaming-opus (8186) on Tuesday September 16, @01:42PM (#25027703)

      I disagree, but then again, I work in the HPC industry.
      1. Standard computers have already taken over all of those jobs that used to require a supercomputer. There's no more market to loose. HPC is a 6-7 billion dollar market. The TAM is growing slower than the rest of the IT industry, but it's still a large niche market.

      2. Clusters got really popular for a few years, but have really fallen out of favor at the high end of the HPC market. That said, the difference between a high-end super, and a cluster, is rather small. Thankfully the price difference is shrinking too. Moreover, this product IS a cluster. It looks like an attempt, by Cray, to get into the low end of the HPC market. Cray, like everyone else, would like to be the company taking market share away from itself, rather than let someone else take it.

      3. IBM has a compelling strategy of reusing their high-end POWER-X processor super-servers, and selling them as supercomputers. The problem with this, is that they are obscenely expensive as supercomputers. A high-end database server has a whole pile of functionality that is completely unnecessary for HPC jobs, both in hardware, and in software. Big iron servers are also WAY more expensive, per-processor, than a super. As such, IBM is also making supers out of commodity clusers, commodity clusters with CELL coprocessors, and BlueGene, which is much closer to CrayXT than it is to an IBM mainframe or superserver. I would argue that IBM's diversity may work against it, in the HPC market, as it tries to fit a round peg into a square hole.

      I'm not sure Cray will be very successful with this CX1 product, or generally, selling to the low-end HPC market. That, however, is not reason to believe that there is no need for venders specialized in HPC systems. Cray has made quite a comeback, in the last few years. The reason one thinks of Cray as a dinosaur, is that the HPC market is so much smaller now, relative to the entire IT industry, compared to the 1980s. Nonetheless, it's still an important niche.

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