Re:Linux dominates supercomputers as never before
by alephnil on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @04:48AM
(#7942857)
I don't think this description is entirely fair. What is expensive with these computers is the fast interconnection buses between processors and modules, which is needed for many scientific problems that can't easily be divided into independent subproblems. Just having a large cluseter of computers connected with normal Ethernet would not cut it. OK, you say souped out network cards, and if you had said souped up switches as well, I could have given you some points, but this is the major cost of modern supercomputers. You can get a non souped-up cluster with the same number of processors for a one digit percentage of the price of the supercomputer.
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Re:Linux dominates supercomputers as never before
by walshemj on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @06:48AM
(#7943172)
Some hadoop clusters are looking at/using infiniband - cluster network design depends on what sort of problems your dealing with.
Re:Linux dominates supercomputers as never before
by weland on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @08:09AM
(#7943414)
Pretty sure everything in top500 is using infiniband by now.
I was briefly involved with the supercomputing world about four years ago. "Should we use Infiniband?" was no longer considered a non-rhetorical question even then.
Re:Linux dominates supercomputers as never before
by gh02t on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @10:58AM
(#7944327)
It's either Infiniband or some other high speed interconnect. It's not exclusively Infiniband, for instance the Chinese developed their own, but it's usually something similar.