What powers the main NASA computers ? 64 cores ? 64GB ram!

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tweakboy

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
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www.hammiestudios.com
I saw somewhere where they stacked a bunch of CPU's to make a supercompouter. It was big as a large racked file server. It was for NASA.


When will we see 16 core desktop CPU ? Im anxious to know.

I mean why 6 cores. If you can make a server with 12 cores. make a desktop with 12 cores. sheez...
 
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ieatdonuts

Member
Aug 7, 2011
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Software programmers can't even use 4 cores to their full potential yet, and you want 16 cores?

This wouldn't be a problem except for reasons that I don't know because I am not a software developer it is difficult to write programs that can equitably use all cores
 
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Voo

Golden Member
Feb 27, 2009
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Yeah we really need desktops with 12+ cores to run server applications that 99.9% of all people don't have any use for! The few people who need this stuff can get a 2P xeon just as well

Also 64cores with 64gb RAM would be a quite useless setup for a server - all those cores would be starved for memory. If you're looking for your baseline small "super computer", think 2tb RAM and 256 cores. Obviously sky's the limit and NASA sure as hell has some much more powerful clusters. You can pretty much stack cluster upon cluster if you want, as long as you can guarantee enough IO for all nodes and an adequate infrastructure.
 
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Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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Well, you can get two octo-core CPUs right now, but server/workstation oriented products. They aren't cheap.

You'll probably see octo-core and 16 core chips on the desktop in a year or two. Whether you'll have software that can actually use them all or not, is a different story.
 
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ieatdonuts

Member
Aug 7, 2011
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Note "full potential" i.e. performance scaling across 4 cores is pretty crappy in many applications.
 
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Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
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ieatdonuts said:
Software programmers can't even use 4 cores to their full potential yet, and you want 16 cores?

This wouldn't be a problem except for reasons that I don't know because I am not a software developer it is difficult to write programs that can equitably use all cores
Click to expand...

Programmers (software) only has control over the degree of parallelization in the code. The Amdahl scaling portion.

AmdahlsLaw.png


They have no control over the network fabric (shared cache, HT, myrinet, ethernet, etc) when it comes to the impact on course-grained versus fine-grained application scaling. (as captured by Almasi and Gottlieb)

AmdahlsLawaugmentedbyAlmasiandGottlieb.png


You can blame software guys for the Ts, but Tip and Tis is all on the hardware guys.

grainvsIPC.png
 
alkemyst

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,769
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ieatdonuts said:
Software programmers can't even use 4 cores to their full potential yet, and you want 16 cores?

This wouldn't be a problem except for reasons that I don't know because I am not a software developer it is difficult to write programs that can equitably use all cores
Click to expand...

lolwut?
 
wuliheron

wuliheron

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2011
3,536
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Haswell is scheduled for 2013 and will supposedly have as many as 8 cores. The advantage is mostly for things like video transcoding which require more accuracy then the simplified cores of the gpu can provide. Having 8 cores is a good minimum for such tasks because it allows full blown matrices to be run making the whole faster then the mere sum of its cores. It would also have advantages for running some of the physics and AI of video games on the cpu freeing the gpu for other tasks.

Sixteen cores would have similar advantages due to the more complex matrices you could run, but when that might become commercially available for home computing is anyone's guess.
 
TakeNoPrisoners

TakeNoPrisoners

Platinum Member
Jun 3, 2011
2,599
1
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Bateluer said:
Well, you can get two octo-core CPUs right now, but server/workstation oriented products. They aren't cheap.

You'll probably see octo-core and 16 core chips on the desktop in a year or two. Whether you'll have software that can actually use them all or not, is a different story.
Click to expand...

Octo core desktop CPU's will be coming out by September if the rumors are to be believed.
 
P

pm

Elite Member Mobile Devices
Jan 25, 2000
7,419
22
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ieatdonuts said:
Software programmers can't even use 4 cores to their full potential yet, and you want 16 cores?

This wouldn't be a problem except for reasons that I don't know because I am not a software developer it is difficult to write programs that can equitably use all cores
Click to expand...

That's definitely incorrect. If that was the case, what would the RIKEN AICS supercomputer with it's 548,352 cores be used for?
http://www.top500.org/list/2011/06/100

For a lot of the simulations that are run where I work, you can add more cores at the problem and see significant speedup for each additional core.


As far as the OP's comment, my coworkers and I are building an overclocking computer for a contest that has 12 cores using an EVGA SR-2 Classified and two 6 core Core i7 980X CPU's. It could loosely be called a desktop system. :)
 
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happy medium

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
126
Idontcare said:
Programmers (software) only has control over the degree of parallelization in the code. The Amdahl scaling portion.

AmdahlsLaw.png


They have no control over the network fabric (shared cache, HT, myrinet, ethernet, etc) when it comes to the impact on course-grained versus fine-grained application scaling. (as captured by Almasi and Gottlieb)

AmdahlsLawaugmentedbyAlmasiandGottlieb.png


You can blame software guys for the Ts, but Tip and Tis is all on the hardware guys.

grainvsIPC.png
Click to expand...

This is the first post I've seen thats way way over my head. :'(
 
P

PreferLinux

Senior member
Dec 29, 2010
420
0
0
pm said:
That's definitely incorrect. If that was the case, what would the RIKEN AICS supercomputer with it's 548,352 cores be used for?
http://www.top500.org/list/2011/06/100

For a lot of the simulations that are run where I work, you can add more cores at the problem and see significant speedup for each additional core.


As far as the OP's comment, my coworkers and I are building an overclocking computer for a contest that has 12 cores using an EVGA SR-2 Classified and two 6 core Core i7 980X CPU's. It could loosely be called a desktop system. :)
Click to expand...
I thought you had to use Xeons for a dual-CPU setup???
 
wuliheron

wuliheron

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2011
3,536
0
0
TakeNoPrisoners said:
Octo core desktop CPU's will be coming out by September if the rumors are to be believed.
Click to expand...

Bulldozer modules share a FPU and aren't true octo cores. Exactly how much an impact they might make on desktop computing is speculative since its a new design and nobody has their hands on one yet.
 
W

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
4
0
i think they gotta start coming up with more uses for computers. we sort of hit a wall a few years ago where our hardware runs everything we need easily besides games. there was a little spike when low power components were infused with HD video processing, but now you cant buy anything new that cant play 1080p video. so were back to being able to do everything we want besides games and thats not enough to strongly drive the pc market.
 
P

PreferLinux

Senior member
Dec 29, 2010
420
0
0
wirednuts said:
i think they gotta start coming up with more uses for computers. we sort of hit a wall a few years ago where our hardware runs everything we need easily besides games. there was a little spike when low power components were infused with HD video processing, but now you cant buy anything new that cant play 1080p video. so were back to being able to do everything we want besides games and thats not enough to strongly drive the pc market.
Click to expand...
You've forgotten that there is a workstation market as well, that still wants more. Plenty still have dual CPUs.
 
dajeepster

dajeepster

Golden Member
Apr 15, 2001
1,974
16
81
Idontcare said:
Programmers (software) only has control over the degree of parallelization in the code. The Amdahl scaling portion.

AmdahlsLaw.png


They have no control over the network fabric (shared cache, HT, myrinet, ethernet, etc) when it comes to the impact on course-grained versus fine-grained application scaling. (as captured by Almasi and Gottlieb)

AmdahlsLawaugmentedbyAlmasiandGottlieb.png


You can blame software guys for the Ts, but Tip and Tis is all on the hardware guys.

grainvsIPC.png
Click to expand...

I remember that.... i'm still trying to forget it... o_O
 
S

soccerballtux

Lifer
Dec 30, 2004
12,553
2
76
ieatdonuts said:
Software programmers can't even use 4 cores to their full potential yet, and you want 16 cores?

This wouldn't be a problem except for reasons that I don't know because I am not a software developer it is difficult to write programs that can equitably use all cores
Click to expand...

personally with Starcraft and WoW I think it's a conspiracy to keep Intel CPUs looking better. If they used the threadpool to manage all the units instead of locking it into 2 threads in Starcraft, performance would scale linearly with the number of cores. Of course, I'm oversimplifying things to make Blizzard look bad and AMD good :)
 
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