Since non of you know what the hell your talking about, let me enlighten you.

We're talking about Windows HPC Server here, where HPC stands for High Performance Computing.
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/default.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/...h-performance_computing

Yup, a monolithic small scale MP system lacking the ability to scale and to dynamically reconfigure resources.

Its a great monolithic 'desktop' MP OS that lacks significant scaling and management options. And it is viable solution for someone seeking a small scale 'desktop' system such as what they are marketing. This will bring the world of MPP systems into play for small shops that would benefit from the power a monolithic (non-dynamic) system offers.

And while this system is great for small scale needs, it fails to compete in the larger distributed dynamically allocatable systems capable of running myriad instances simultaneously.

Linux offers greater flexibility for the price. And yet neither offer the robust capabilities of a systems such as AIX & PSSP.

So please, enlighten us. But I would suggest doing a bit more reading if you want to learn about more mature and capable MP environments

The joke is that for those MS fanboys here like prepubescent who are unaware of the larger more capble systems who want to tout MS HPS as equivalent to the mature MP environments such as are offered by IBM.

Welcome to the party MS, but in its present forem, their baby MP OS is hardly 'high performance computing' compared to the alternatives presently available.

So how many of these things can run Crysis?

This sounds to me like it has more to do with hardware and less to do with the os. Windows has it's place in life but, so does osx and Linux. Desktop/laptop Linux is for enthusiasts and the more knowledgeable. I find it quite interesting that the most serious of mainframe/supercomputer/server creations still rely on some form of Unix. There maybe a "world of Windows" in the desktop/laptop realm, but most of that is for simple users and not for the designations referred to in this article. You pic your os based in need/desire. I have seen absolutely nothing anywhere that can come even close to winning over Unix (even with it being older than Apple or Microsoft).

Actually, it has much more to do with the OS and the interprocessor communication network management capabilities between nodes which contain multiple processors.

Latency and contention become critical factors in a MPP environment and fgreat efort must be expended to minimiz such concerns.

Likewise, the control and coordination of such resources - and the associated resources - especially the concurrent access of memory by MANY is absolutely critical to avoid corruption as well as additional contention related issues.

The fact is, there is a world of OS environments and fundamental capabilities FAR beyond what desktop Windows and OSX embody featuring MUCH greater functionality.

And you are correct, UNIX based systems, of which AIX is simply IBM's UNIX, absolutely dominate this niche. And while OSX is also a UNIX (UNIX being a trademarked product name - hence all of the variants being refered to as Unix-like or by some variation on the name - AIX, HP-UX, Solaris/SunOS, OSX. Linux,etc.) there exist a substantial additional management structure (eg IBM's PSSP) that rides atop the OS allowing for the control of the extensive additiona resource management issues that come to play in a MPP environment.

"Intel processor-based machines comprised 378 of the Top 500."

"Intel CPUs did not place so well among the top performers, as AMD Opteron processors scored the #2, #6, #7, #8, #9, and #10 positions, among the 60 that did make the list."

Not too bad for an outdated CPU.

Opteron still is more bang/$

nice to see that but look at poor Crapple Mac OS XXX :P I love that

perhaps, they used windows 3.1

An example of how literally anything can become an MS/Apple fanboy rant!

NEITHER OS is suited for a dynamically configurable massively parallel complex whereby resources can be dynamically allocated.

And to the degree that anyone tries to turn this topic into such a discussion simply demonstrates that they have no knowledge of the environment.

And statically designed, monolithic massively parallel processing has essentially been obsolete for almost 15 years. And their use is relegated now to almost the workstation level.

"NEITHER OS is suited for a dynamically configurable massively parallel complex whereby resources can be dynamically allocated."

And what specifically makes you state this claim, assuming you are smart enough to know that they are not running Windows 95 on those machines..?

Perhaps having worked on development of the internals for exactly this environment for many years and having been directly involved with the design and deployment of such environments including ASCI White and ASCI Blue Pacific.

The dynamic management of massively parallel computing environments is not within the scope of either MS Server nor OSX server! LOL!

It may come as a surprise, but there is a bit more involved with massively parallel computing than simply adding processors or assembling a 'cluster'!

And to create a system where the entire complex of resources can scale and be dynamically allocated among multiple running instances of multiple massively parallel jobs is not a trivial matter.

For this you might want to research just how the RS6000SP was designed to be, and succeeded at being the original 'Cray killer' - a monolithic massively parallel machine that could not dynamically allocate resources nor run multiple MP jobs simultaneously.

The management of such capabilities is an entirely separate but integrated control layer running on top of the OS.

If you want to begin to understand the capabilities, try reading a few of the IBM Redbooks regarding PSSP.

Even more remarkable the Windows server makes such inroads then. It's the general pattern of commodity based solutions making inroads on specialized ones once there is demand. Interesting would be to bring the cost perspective on these systems - although unrealistic given their experimental nature.

Making inroads?

Simply because you can pile a bunch of processors and run a monolithic massively parallel machine?

Yup, give them a few more years and they can be where Cray was in the 1980's! LOL!
But have you noticed how many time Cray was sold in the 1990's because of that limitation 15 years ago?

The monolithic model effectively died 15 years ago with the advent of the SP. Oh.

Linux has had the Beowolf cluster for over 10 years now. And that's free.

There are good reasons no one seriously looks to MS nor Apple for such large scale systems.

But when so many think the puny desktop market (where the concept of multi-threaded applications is a stretch!) is the hammer that defines the world of computing, all the world looks like a nail. LOL!

What is remarkable is that SO FEW have a clue regarding the enterprise use of computers, and the fundamenttal differences between the various classes and types of computing such that folks think this is a contest between Windows server and OSX!

And such willful ignorance in persisting to try to treat the various classes as 'one' quickly ceases to be a matter of ignore-ance and very quickly escalates to that of stupidity.

And its hilarious to watch the degree that you and others simply persist in refusing to recognize the distinction and simply look for the names MS and Apple.

"And its hilarious to watch the degree that you and others simply persist in refusing to recognize the distinction and simply look for the names MS and Apple."

Yawn, how predictable... so says our closet Apple fanboy. The rest of us just use Windows for business reasons (I for one have other things to do than convince my various Fortune 10 clients to switch corporate platforms) and get irritated by being insulted for getting work done.

Anyway, back to the context. You really don't get it. Almost any successful technology started in a lab prohibitively expensive and transformed into affordable commodity. With everything moving to the cloud MSFT obviously started targeting this market now (which made zero sense for them 10y ago). And being so clever you derive the underlying details of the technology by someone having decided to name the product as part of the Windows family? Get a life dude...

You don't get it "dude".

The model you tout was outdated and rendered effectively obsolete by the business community with the development of the RS6000SP!

What started in the lab and was initially applied only for government purposes WAS demanded by the enterprise market! That is what resulted in the product that 'killed" the monolithic MP computing market!

Do a little more research into the origins and market development of the SP series, dimwit!

And such a limited intelligence would cause you to call e an Apple fanboy, simply because I prefer UNIX by a WIDE margin over Windows. And yes, OSX IS a good implementation for the desktop. But as far as a fan of anal Steve Jobs and especially their current design release of the MacBook line, I defy you to find ONE post where I laud their design! In fact, I think they suck.

Just because I get tired of the MS fanboy stupidity where most still think a Mac is anything other than a PC does not a fanboy make. There are just numerically more stupid MS fanboys than there are stupid Apple fanboys. Just like you, when you are not playing the MS fanboy blame the US for all of the world's problems.

I don't give a sh!t what MS choses to do in the MP world. And ironically, neither does anyone who requires the use of the technology, as the model MS employs was rendered obsolete 15 years ago BY THE VERY MARKET YOU SAY WILL BE ITS SOURCE! Duh!

Not to mention the fact that there is quite a bit of difference between a subsidized proof of concept machine by one company and a mass market shipping product that companies such as IBM ship daily!

So you talk about MS and their little monolithic MP machine that you can build for less with Linux (and could do for the last 10 years!) The market has moved on far past that puny niche to where the current models consist of 100's and thousands of such units in a SCALABLE and dynamically allocatable model.

But then your obvious ignorance of this market niche can hardly be exaggerated! ...Talk about 'predictable', fanboy!

There is more to real world market history than your asinine emotional response devoid of historical context. "Dude"

LOL!

"The model you tout"

Stopped reading here - I tout nothing...

You are drifting off into fairy land once again. TexasFox the mighty knight of wisdom.

Dude he is an idiot. Say something and he will blame you for saying something else then...boring

LOL

Windows, you dumbsh!t.

Yup, monolithic MP machines are the future! Despite their market demise almost 15 years ago.

And you stupidly assert that MP AIX and Linux based systems are "experimental". LOL!

NONSENSE! The RS6000SP and subsequent COMMERCIAL MODELS have defined the industry! This is a robust commercial product for a robust commercial market! Only the ongoing R&D is 'experimental' as they increasingly push the envelope!

Stick to making your asinine anti-US comments and worrying about your whizbang desktop PC.

Bottomline, you know nothing about MP processing.

Oh, and again we also get to listen to the fool who thinks Windows scripting is 'da bomb' and who adds nothing substantial to the thread other than noise. Try writing a printer driver that works...

*sigh* Still ranting on - and so unexpectedly!

"Only the ongoing R&D is 'experimental' as they increasingly push the envelope!"

Oh you finally managed to grasp what the article is about. The red fog momentarily clearing up? Bravo! Oh, there it went again...

ALL R&D is experimental until it ships as product, dimwit!

But here the IBM AIX and Linux based machines are simply configured currently shipping technology actively used in production environments! All they are doing is introducing the newer hardware introduced to the market since the last trial!

And much of the listed IBM technology consists of in place, functional production machines!!!! Read that again! They are not experimental proof of performance experiments!

I would ask what part of that you fail to understand, but its obvious that you miss ALL of it, as you still think the machines are experimental! You nitwit!
You are clueless!

It is painfully obvious that you are clueless regarding the MP world and market! LOL!

Stick to defending the grand European tradition of genocide. You are equally inept in justifying it, but at least there you know the meaning of a few more words.

Alright, 1st of all: Thank you! Your idiocy made me laugh out loud a few times yday at the bar. It's quite an accomplishment to make me think about you outside of work breaks.

Let's revisit this conversation.

1 - I make a fairly neutral statement that it's cool where commodity products have come.
2 - You claim Windows (in general - prob just for the reason if it being an MSFT product) is completely unsuitable for the task (which is funny given the article is about it breaking into the top 10 fastest computers on Earth)
3 - I reiterate that it is common for commodity to catch up with specialized products once there is a market.
4 - You become characteristically and boringly abusive and start thumping your chest about your superior wisdom and how pathetic it is to use generic components for MP (reminder - the article is about Win breaking the top 10...)
5 - I make some casual comments about experimental systems (we are talking about the fastest computers on Earth being specifically tweaked for the performance championship - one of a kind complex systems)
6 - You start your characteristically boring insults about how pathetic it is to claim these were specialized systems and how widely popular commodity products they are.

7 - At this point I cannot start laughing. You just entered an infinite loop insulting yourself. You fool are like a kitten chasing its own tail.

I guess you got lost in the red fog. Good for you! It must truly suck being fully conscious of actually BEING you.

What a shame this article is dropping off but I pray to god you see this. And please keep up the good work. You are too amusing.

Nitwit, the VAST majority of the IBM Power based systems are NOT "one of a kind complex systems!

Just about anyone (recognizing the security related export restrictions) can call up IBM and order one 'off the shelf' configured as they want it! Duh!

But you are STILL confused about this aren;t you? And the SP based systems that dominate are already 15 years old!!! From back when you were still in diapers.

They ARE off the shelf components able to be scaled as necessary with an off the shelf OS and MP management system - not to mention the readily available HA configurations such as HA-GEO allowing for complete redundancy and failover capabilities for multiple complexes - 2 or MORE - located in diverse locations about the globe.

Your ignorance of their widespread use and application is sad, and it really makes any chance of a real discussion of issues virtually impossible as you attempt to evaluate large scale robust environments to you desktop which already overly stretches your limited imagination.

Your ignorance of large scale distributed systems is almost matched by my boredom with small scale desktop environments that imagine themselves to be as robust and functional as what has existed for 10-15 years already in more mature high end product offerings.

And, by the way fanboy, I mentioned both Windows AND OSX, only to point out that neither have the functionality that a dynamic environment such as AIX and PSSP offer- in response to your fanboy colleagues. (But then, you don't even know to what environments I refer, do you desktop boy?) Although OSX comes much closer to actually having the fundamental infrastructure to do so, having as it does FreeBSD at its core.

Bottomline, you are clueless about large scale systems in general, and MP systems in particular.

You might want to stick to your forte of blaming the US for all of the world's evils and evaluating printer drivers - where the market opportunities for someone who can actually write a Windows driver are unlimited- if unrealized.

Most likely, they got the #1 machine, and installed Windows, making it now the 10th fastest computer on the earth. ;-)
Seriously though, Windows OSes are still by far the slowest in the market. I think Windows 7 (which has a pretty fast beta - much faster than Vista) is a change in focus for Microsoft. But I remember when, at home, I wanted to compile an audio recorded with Audacity. Same machine (an iMac) using bootcamp. Using MacOS, it took me half the time to compile the same audio, on the same hardware, using the same version of Audacity. Shows that MS has a lot of work to do on performance. Perhaps the legacy compatibility is one of the greastest things dragging them down.

Does that computer comply with the "Vista Ready" requirements or is that also part of the class action against microsoft because they couldn't get aero working?

lol

"The one Mac OS X-based supercomputer still in the lot remains the one made for COLSA Corporation out of Xserve clusters, now ranking #310 with an Rmax score of 16,180"

LOL

As usual the troll can't figure out that if you are going to construct a massively parallel computer complex, you would want to use an OS optimized for such.

And the MS fanboy still can't quite figure out why UNIX in general dominates and AIX and PSSP in particular dominates the larger Power offerings.

What isn't specified, and what would change things substantially is if the complexes are designed to be monolithic complexes where jobs are submitted via time slice, or whether the complexes can be dynamically configured to simultaneously run multiple massively parallel jobs on a complex where resources and jobs are able to be dynamically allocated - but then the majority of those machines would suddenly be out of the running.

But then the troll hasn't a clue as to what the distinction I just mentioned even means.
Yup, that Windows machine - in ANY version offered - has no clue either. But then you have no idea why Power and AIX can and do, do you?

Or why Intel developed on an RS6000SP with AIX/PSSP for so many years...

While you and your friends can't seem to get a printer driver to function properly!
I might suggest that you have your hands more than full with faulty printer drivers, but I suspect we know what you are really doing that resulted in greater than 10 percent faulty drivers!

LOL!

You idiot! when did I say that? dumb @ss

LOL

What is hilarious is that the only thing you recognize in the entire discussion of massively parallel computing is the mention of the word Apple, which your adolescent sensibilities whined about.

So tell us about the prodigious Windows scripting environment added as an afterthought. Stick to trying to write a functional driver, fanboy.

LOL!

As usual, you seem unable to explain something without taking potshots. The troll would seem to be you.

30,720 AMD Opteron cores wow... can I get a picture of that bad boy?

Pictures have been cut out of the budget due to recession.

And these are just the computers we're allowed to know about. You have to wonder what the various intelligence and military communities have at their disposal.

and the software . . .

The exact same or similar systems.

And a primary use, that surprises many, is for weather forecasting.