What's Cray been doing lately?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ykhan
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ykhan

Been wondering what Cray was upto recently. They were supposed to have
already released the Red Storm computer (now known as the XT3) in
Sandia National Labs by now, but I haven't heard much about it. Red
Storm has already been eclipsed by two other computers. So it looks
like the delays are caused by a lack of the router chips for the
XT3's. The router chips are produced by IBM Microelectronics.
Similarly IBM Micro is delaying shipments of vector processors used in
Cray's X1E supercomputer line.

But it looks like Cray's recently purchased Octigabay supercluster
line (now known as XD1) are coming out on time.

This story is about Cray finding a customer who will take both its XD1
and X1E lineups at the same time. That must be one funky joint cluster
considering the two lines use totally different processors and
different instruction sets.

Cray books $8 million X1E and XD1 supercomputer deal - Computer
Business Review
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=C3ACCFFF-E44D-4DA6-9F36-F2168D434872

Yousuf Khan
 
They were supposed to have
already released the Red Storm computer (now known as the XT3) in
Sandia National Labs by now, but I haven't heard much about it.
Click to expand...

As was mentioned here a few weeks ago, about 10 Tflop/s of Red Storm
is installed, the entire thing is supposed to be ready in January
2005.

Take a look at their website, among the SC2004 marketing slides there
are some performance results reported for the XT3. Except for vector
machines, it seems to have higher memory bandwidth/flop and
interconnect bandwidth/flop than anything else out there.

They seem to be selling the thing for about $0.8 million/Tflop which
puts it in the same price range as a cluster with a high end
interconnect. Considering all of this, IMHO it doesn't seem too
unlikely that the XT3 will be a commercial success.

What I'm wondering is what are they going to do with the upcoming dual
core Opterons? AFAIK, the Catamount microkernel that runs the compute
nodes is not SMP capable. Are they going to make Catamount SMP-capable
or will it be possible to run separate kernels for each core?
Red
Storm has already been eclipsed by two other computers.
Click to expand...

Which, in the end, doesn't mean that much for a prospective buyer.
So it looks
like the delays are caused by a lack of the router chips for the
XT3's. The router chips are produced by IBM Microelectronics.
Similarly IBM Micro is delaying shipments of vector processors used in
Cray's X1E supercomputer line.
Click to expand...

<tinfoil hat>
It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!
</tinfoil hat>

Seriously, I think this is just one of those "shit happens"
things. IBM Micro stands to lose lots of money if it becomes known
that they drag their feet fabbing stuff that potentially could compete
with IBM gear.
This story is about Cray finding a customer who will take both its XD1
and X1E lineups at the same time. That must be one funky joint cluster
considering the two lines use totally different processors and
different instruction sets.

Cray books $8 million X1E and XD1 supercomputer deal - Computer
Business Review
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=C3ACCFFF-E44D-4DA6-9F36-F2168D434872
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a "joint cluster", as in a single job using both
vector and scalar processors. The software and hardware for
heterogenous clusters isn't really there yet (but see Crays Rainier
project). It's probably two separate clusters, possibly connected with
some grid middleware (one batch scheduler to command them all). If
they're doing something really funky, perhaps they're using part of
the XD1 as a frontend for the X1 (login nodes, compiling, network i/o
etc.).
 
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