[Beowulf] Multicore Is Bad News For Supercomputers

[Joe Landman]

Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
> 
>> Very cheaply you can build nodes now with like 4 cheapo cpu's
>> and 128 GB ram inside.
>>
> 
> Not exactly. 2 GB DIMMs are cheap, but as soon as you go to larger DIMMs
> (4 GB, 8 GB, etc.), the price goes up exponentially.
> 
> Less than a year ago, we purchased a couple of server with 32 GB RAM. We
> then wanted to purchase one with 64 GB RAM. The cost of the system
> tripled! Instead, we bought 3 more 32 GB systems.

The cost of 64GB went down quite recently.  We have sold quite a few of 
these at this size due to memory cost drops.

> 
> Dell and others advertise systems that support up to 128 GB RAM, but I
> have yet to meet someone who can afford to put all 128 GB RAM in a
> single box.

We have seen a few.  Its not as expensive as you think.  256 GB ... yeah 
thats more.

And again, if you don't mind a quick plug for ScaleMP (we are not 
currently a reseller of theirs, we make no money from them), you can tie 
a few machines together (various constraints) with lower cost 
memory/components, and get some nice sized single system images.  Of 
course YMMV.


-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
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