[Beowulf] Re: Finally, a solution for the 64 core 4TB RAM market

[Mark Hahn]

>> while I like the idea of these being available, I wonder where the
>> real (big) market is.
>
> You mean other than commercial / HR databases that were built on
> Sun's SMPs and now have a questionable upgrade path?

when I look at Sun's high-end boxes, I see either webservers
(the many-thread stuff) or kind of sad old-fashioned sparc minis.
the latter would probably lose out to a decent modern dual-socket
box (dual nehalem like the HP DL760).  the question is how much 
volume there is in the >= 8-socket market, and I don't mean "how 
many PHB's can be persuaded they need one because they're important".

> Likely replacing current mid-range, <100-node clusters with a
> single box.

unclear to me.  a current mid-range 100-node cluster is 800 cores,
and I don't think we're talking about that in an SMP.  Intel's recent
nehalem-ex preview was 128 hyperthreads (64 real).

I would guess that most people who currently have clusters would rather 
get bigger/faster/cooler clusters, rather than go to SMP, unless for some
reason they have a fixed problem size.  possible, I guess.