Another AMD supercomputer, 13,000 quad-core

"Robert Myers" wrote in message
ups.com...
Del Cecchi wrote:


On the other hand, even the government would have to have a semi valid
reason for doing so, and it isn't clear that there is one. Although
Cray and their vector processors are an interesting data point.

When the Cray-1 first came out, people talked overenthusiastically
about numerical wind tunnels and stunning computer animations and
graphics. The company I worked for closed a lab without a second
thought on the not entirely-incorrect theory that fluid mechanical
experiments were mostly a thing of the past. Funny thing is, most of
those predictions have come true, just not in the way or on the time
scale anyone would have expected at the time.

A similar development in biotechnology would have all the floor space
around MIT filled with computational scientists instead of wet
chemists. We're no further away from that than we were from a
numerical wind tunnel when people spoke glibly of such a thing, but
people talk much more cautiously now than they did then.

It's about vision and pizazz, not transistors, and the annual
supercomputer linpack ho-hum hasn't helped.

Robert.

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.

DK

On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:
Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.

First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is incompetent or
misguided, technically?... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems, though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers, though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

George Macdonald wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:
Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.

First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is incompetent or
misguided, technically?

I haven't seen much evidence to support incompetence. However, it is
rather apparent that Cray will not be successful financially b/c of a
combination of economic and technical reasons. OTOH, some of those
technical reasons keep Cray alive, albeit in a dimished and marginal
state.

... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

HPC is a difficult, difficult market with a mercurial customer base and
low volumes. In other words, it's a commercial disaster.

Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

I'm talking about the company Cray. They are not an economically
viable enterprise, through the combination of their products, or any
individual product line.

Their COTS cluster is not very interesting, since it's a very tough
market with competition from Dell (and that competition will look even
more attractive if they ever release 2S opteron systems) and HP that is
hard to beat. Cray has the same problem as SGI, except that their
value added (the real vector machines) are vastly less popular than the
Altix. I also don't think Cray does storage, but I may be wrong.

Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems, though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

When was this embargo?

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers,

I actually think the demand for such machines has increased over time.
The issue is whether demand increases faster than Moore's law increases
integration. As we all know, it only takes 4 sockets to build a 8P
machine, and in a short period of time that will be 16S. The larger
machines are being eaten from below, and the one factor that they can
stave them off with is bandwidth to I/O, memory, etc.

though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!

HPC is a crappy market. Sellers beware : )

DK

George Macdonald wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:

Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.


First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is incompetent or
misguided, technically?... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

I do not think Cray is an incompetent company. It seems like that
vector processing has difficulty competing with various forms of
clusters in many HPC applications, yet Cray (formerly Terra) continues
to pursue it. In fact they bought the line from SGI for some reason.
The original Terra MTA seems to have disappeared from view.


Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

Real Supercomputer? What is the definition of "Real Supercomputer"? I
was referring to the traditional Cray Vector line.


Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems, though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

The dumping case was presumably due to the fact that a court found that
NEC was indeed "dumping" under the definiton in US law. But wasn't that
a long time ago, technologically speaking? And the HPC market has
changed.

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers, though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!


IBM seems to be selling some Blue Genes, and there seem to be a fair
number of large NUMA and Cluster machines around. As was shown by some
University with a bunch of Macs a pile of boxes and some interconnect
will go a long way, without paying HPC markups.


--
Del Cecchi
"This post is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions,
strategies or opinions.”

"David Kanter" wrote in message
oups.com...

George Macdonald wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter"
wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:
Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the
vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those
vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and
have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.

First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is
incompetent or
misguided, technically?

I haven't seen much evidence to support incompetence. However, it is
rather apparent that Cray will not be successful financially b/c of a
combination of economic and technical reasons. OTOH, some of those
technical reasons keep Cray alive, albeit in a dimished and marginal
state.

... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

HPC is a difficult, difficult market with a mercurial customer base and
low volumes. In other words, it's a commercial disaster.

Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS
cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

I'm talking about the company Cray. They are not an economically
viable enterprise, through the combination of their products, or any
individual product line.

Their COTS cluster is not very interesting, since it's a very tough
market with competition from Dell (and that competition will look even
more attractive if they ever release 2S opteron systems) and HP that is
hard to beat. Cray has the same problem as SGI, except that their
value added (the real vector machines) are vastly less popular than the
Altix. I also don't think Cray does storage, but I may be wrong.

Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even
the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems,
though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US
govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

When was this embargo?

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers,

I actually think the demand for such machines has increased over time.
The issue is whether demand increases faster than Moore's law increases
integration. As we all know, it only takes 4 sockets to build a 8P
machine, and in a short period of time that will be 16S. The larger
machines are being eaten from below, and the one factor that they can
stave them off with is bandwidth to I/O, memory, etc.

though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves
it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial
backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!

HPC is a crappy market. Sellers beware : )

DK

It appears to have been in 97
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/q...rcomputer.html

"UCAR's acquisition of a NEC SX-4 supercomputer was officially stopped in
late August as a result of two federal decisions. The U.S. Department of
Commerce assigned a dumping margin of 454% for NEC supercomputers. On the
same day, the U.S. Court of International Trade rejected NEC's claim that
the Commerce Department had prejudged the case. In light of these
decisions and in accordance with the regulations of the U.S. Office of
Management and Budget that all procurements be conducted to provide, to
the maximum extent possible, open and free competition, NSF informed UCAR
that it cannot approve the award for the NEC SX-4...."

If that is the case that was referred to. They ended up buying a couple
of Crays.

From Electronic News, "Washington, D.C.--When Cray Research, the
supercomputer subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc., and NEC, along with
its supercomputing subsidiary HNSX Supercomputers, Inc., failed to settle
amicably a Cray complaint over supercomputer dumping, the International
Trade Commission (ITC) was forced to issue a ruling on Friday. The ITC
upheld the U.S. Commerce Department's contention made in August (EN, Aug.
25) that NEC, Fujitsu and other Japanese supercomputer companies were
guilty of dumping and would have to pay the U.S. government duties on all
future imports of supercomputers. Cray will receive no direct
compensation from NEC or any other Japanese firm, the company said."

On 31 Oct 2006 02:36:18 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


George Macdonald wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:
Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.

First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is incompetent or
misguided, technically?

I haven't seen much evidence to support incompetence. However, it is
rather apparent that Cray will not be successful financially b/c of a
combination of economic and technical reasons. OTOH, some of those
technical reasons keep Cray alive, albeit in a dimished and marginal
state.

As usual, "apparent" to you... and you are entitled to that opinion.

... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

HPC is a difficult, difficult market with a mercurial customer base and
low volumes. In other words, it's a commercial disaster.

I thought it was clear that was what I was getting at. The market is
somewhat cyclical though as the pendulum swings between distributed systems
and centralized computing. In fact I sense a swing back to centralized in
the business computing market now after the dominance of distributed for
the past few years.

Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

I'm talking about the company Cray. They are not an economically
viable enterprise, through the combination of their products, or any
individual product line.

Missing the point as I see it.

Their COTS cluster is not very interesting, since it's a very tough
market with competition from Dell (and that competition will look even
more attractive if they ever release 2S opteron systems) and HP that is
hard to beat. Cray has the same problem as SGI, except that their
value added (the real vector machines) are vastly less popular than the
Altix. I also don't think Cray does storage, but I may be wrong.

Dell compared with Cray? What are you smoking?

Now an Itanium cluster is compared with a HPC high-capability system? I
must get some of that stuff you have! If Cray is in trouble, SGI is in
(extended) death rattle.

Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems, though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

When was this embargo?

A few years ago, though it was really an anti-dumping order, which was
effectively an embargo... before Cray took over HNSX.

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers,

I actually think the demand for such machines has increased over time.
The issue is whether demand increases faster than Moore's law increases
integration. As we all know, it only takes 4 sockets to build a 8P
machine, and in a short period of time that will be 16S. The larger
machines are being eaten from below, and the one factor that they can
stave them off with is bandwidth to I/O, memory, etc.

I said "high-capabilty" systems. While they can be, and usually have,
multiple processors they are not built from COTS. There are simply
problems to be solved, in govt sponsored projects and business, where
nothing else will do.

though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!

HPC is a crappy market. Sellers beware : )

There *is* a demand; for commercial/business use, the price is the problem.
For the technical buyer, selling it to management is a *big* hurdle...
which is further confused by management's understanding of the real costs
of distributed computing.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:34:58 -0600, Del Cecchi
wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 11:16:24 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:


Robert Myers wrote:

Del Cecchi wrote:

Actually I was referring to the thought that Cray, especially the vector
line, seems to be supported by the NSA. Do they sell those vector
machines to anyone besides the Government?

I believe that Boeing, at least, is still a customer.

I suspect that there is a very small number of customers for Cray, my
understanding is that they are largely on the government dole and have
no chance of being a commercial viable endeavor.


First, is this because you suspect that Cray as a company is incompetent or
misguided, technically?... or that HPC is just an uneconomic market? It's
certainly a market where it is difficult to decide a street price for
product.

I do not think Cray is an incompetent company. It seems like that
vector processing has difficulty competing with various forms of
clusters in many HPC applications, yet Cray (formerly Terra) continues
to pursue it. In fact they bought the line from SGI for some reason.
The original Terra MTA seems to have disappeared from view.

Yeah, it's a difficult market - there are, however, many scientists out
there dreaming of solving the next generation of problems with yet to be
produced high-capability hardware. In the business realm though, it'd be
kinda hard for the likes of Ford to justify the expense, given their
current financial condition.


Second, which "Cray" are you talking about? The high-capacity COTS cluster
Cray or the high-capabilty (real supercomputer?) one?

Real Supercomputer? What is the definition of "Real Supercomputer"? I
was referring to the traditional Cray Vector line.

I was going to say "vector" but I gather that seems insufficient now with
enhancements added to vector processors for scalar, short vector, parallel
etc.


Quite honestly, I don't have a good grasp of the answers here and even the
"experts" in the HPC filed seem confused and at odds. It seems, though,
that one important issue involved is: was the anti-dumping embargo on
NEC/HNSX correct or just protectionism to cover up mistakes by the US govt
in procurement policy and/or by Cray in technical direction? That's
somewhat history now but the dilemma remains relevant I think.

The dumping case was presumably due to the fact that a court found that
NEC was indeed "dumping" under the definiton in US law. But wasn't that
a long time ago, technologically speaking? And the HPC market has
changed.

Aren't the Japanese still building huge supercomputers?... or at least till
very recently?

I don't see much evidence of the large corps clamoring for high-end
high-capability computers, though there are niches where they might bite,
if the price is not astronomical. Seems like this pretty much leaves it in
the hands of NSF and other govt. sponsors to initiate the financial backing
- IOW enterprise needs will bask in the the err, fall-out.... maybe!


IBM seems to be selling some Blue Genes, and there seem to be a fair
number of large NUMA and Cluster machines around. As was shown by some
University with a bunch of Macs a pile of boxes and some interconnect
will go a long way, without paying HPC markups.

Sure but that won't tackle the scientific "dreamer" problems.:-)

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

George Macdonald wrote:
On 31 Oct 2006 02:36:18 -0800, "David Kanter" wrote:



Their COTS cluster is not very interesting, since it's a very tough
market with competition from Dell (and that competition will look even
more attractive if they ever release 2S opteron systems) and HP that is
hard to beat. Cray has the same problem as SGI, except that their
value added (the real vector machines) are vastly less popular than the
Altix. I also don't think Cray does storage, but I may be wrong.

Dell compared with Cray? What are you smoking?

Now an Itanium cluster is compared with a HPC high-capability system? I
must get some of that stuff you have! If Cray is in trouble, SGI is in
(extended) death rattle.

SGI's real value-added seems to be their ability to run a very large
number of processors under a single system image. In my perception,
Cray vector processors definitely influenced the design of Itanium, and
Itanium shines for the same kind of problems as the classic Crays.
Whether it was actually wise for SGI to use Itanium is a separate
question entirely, but anyone who thinks that AMD is the future of
supercomputing is out of touch with reality.

Folding at home is reporting a 20-40x speedup using GPU's as opposed to
COTS processors. That's not a theoretical advantage. It's one
achieved actually in practice. I haven't been following the GPGPU
(General Purpose GPU) field closely, but if I had a bundle of money to
spend on R&D, that's where it would be going, not into a new high-end
processor. I do know the strengths and limitations of vector
processors very well, and the new stream processors (including Cell and
GPU's) seem like more than worthy successors--at a much lower price.

Robert.