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olePigeon · Sep 22, 2003, 04:50 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/te...partner=GOOGLE

Increase data speed between CPUs a 100 fold. Couple that with their already superior scalability and you now have insanely fast multiprocessing.

I hope Sun joins the IBM & Apple consortium. That would kick ass.

Superchicken · Sep 22, 2003, 06:23 PM

hmmm remember the last company apple and IBM joined up with?

That said I can deffinately see Sun and Apple and IBM all doing some pretty grovey stuff

ZackS · Sep 22, 2003, 06:26 PM

Originally posted by Superchic[k]en:
hmmm remember the last company apple and IBM joined up with?

That said I can deffinately see Sun and Apple and IBM all doing some pretty grovey stuff

Why would they be interested in anything to do with fruit bearing trees?

olePigeon · Sep 22, 2003, 08:36 PM

Originally posted by ZackS:
Why would they be interested in anything to do with fruit bearing trees?

Sun is essential for fruit trees.

Sun proposed to work with Apple earlier on a unified desktop architecture. I wonder if this new technology might be thrown into the pot?

Full 100% speed boost in dual processors. Pretty cool if you ask me.

macvillage.net · Sep 22, 2003, 11:07 PM

Suns servers are great. They truely are.

When you have to deal with massive traffic on a box... you want a sun. They are expensive, they are tough on the admin at times... but they are solid with a good admin. Far beyond what any other could provide.

I've had the pleasure of working with them a few points (development, not admin). And they are the most reliable systems on the planet (in the right hands). Bad admins... and it's not so pretty. They aren't for amatures. Pro's only.

But great performance, even under amazing amounts of load. No sweat.

Richard Edgar · Sep 23, 2003, 05:05 AM

A 100% speed boost for Sun machines? Well, on one program benchmark I've seen (a tree SPH code for neutron star mergers) that would just about make them as fast as a three year old O3k. Not terribly impressive.

Link · Sep 23, 2003, 05:09 AM

dell sux

just like mac. Too slow. I couldn't even play my games without my 3.2ghz HTP4DDRQDR and HTEXTREME

and I have a rad9800proxp and yeah.

AlbertWu · Sep 23, 2003, 08:10 AM

huh?

mitchell_pgh · Sep 23, 2003, 12:54 PM

Originally posted by Link:
dell sux

just like mac. Too slow. I couldn't even play my games without my 3.2ghz HTP4DDRQDR and HTEXTREME

and I have a rad9800proxp and yeah.

When as Apple ever been a great gaming system?

I play a game here or there, but I don't buy Mac for gaming. I buy an PS2 or Game Cube for gaming...

olePigeon · Sep 23, 2003, 05:49 PM

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
A 100% speed boost for Sun machines? Well, on one program benchmark I've seen (a tree SPH code for neutron star mergers) that would just about make them as fast as a three year old O3k. Not terribly impressive.

You read it wrong. 100 fold is 1000%, and it's not the chip performance, it's the communication between the chips.

When you have a dual processor machine you only get maybe 40% to (if you're lucky) 80% speed increase. The 970 has increased chip bandwith and Apple hovers aroune 90%, which in itself is impressive.

However, with this new technology from Sun there is seemingly NO hinderence in multi-processors.

If you buy an Intel based server, you're not going to get more than 16 processors on one board (I think they're up to 32 now, but I'm not sure.) That's not too bad and the latency isn't too bad either.

However, in Sun's case, they make servers with as many as 256 processors. The technology behind it is absolutely awsome because they have servers where you can stick in processors as you need them (litterally, while the computer is running! Just slap in a processor and you get an instant speed boost.) Sun makes ULTRA scalable servers with a phenominal amount of processors.

The problem, however, is that you get diminshing returns on the more processors you stick in. This technology will allow Sun to have a 256 processor server (not cluster, mind you) with no latency between chips.

Sun will instantly have the fastest servers on the market.

Richard Edgar · Sep 26, 2003, 06:14 AM

You read it wrong. 100 fold is 1000%

Actually, 100 fold would be 10000%. But no matter.

However, in Sun's case, they make servers with as many as 256 processors

If you do a little research, you will discover that SGI have been making 512 processor systems for a number of years....

This technology will allow Sun to have a 256 processor server (not cluster, mind you) with no latency between chips

They've broken that thorny problem with the speed of light, have they?

sanity assassin · Sep 26, 2003, 06:28 AM

Yup, SGI have been leading the way for quite a while with their multi-cpu, and amazing bus technologies. Combine that with Irix 64, and you have one mind-blowing system.
Check out this 1000 cpu monster.

http://sgi.com/origin/3000/

voodoo · Sep 26, 2003, 07:21 AM

Sun is in the server market because they make fine hardware and software. For a commercial UNIX I love Solaris. (I love OS X more - naturally)

I am an OSophil,

Richard Edgar · Sep 26, 2003, 08:37 AM

I don't belive the 1024 processor systems are single image - the hardware/software can't cope with that yet. Certainly, 512 processor single image is the largest they advertise.

olePigeon · Sep 26, 2003, 07:58 PM

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:

If you do a little research, you will discover that SGI have been making 512 processor systems for a number of years....

Wow, that's neat. But it's still a data cluster. They have large enclosures with motherboards up the wazoo linked over a distributive network.

EDIT: I may be looking at the wrong one, the SGI Orion I looked at was a Pentium III cluster. Seems rather old, I'm unaware of SGI's current run of MIPS based servers and I don't know much behind the technology of theirs.

Sun's Enterprise servers (though, from the looks of it, they have scaled it down to 106 UltraSPARC III processors, rather than 256 UltraSPARC II) aren't clusters.

They've broken that thorny problem with the speed of light, have they?

No, but I wasn't speaking figuratively. Of course there's going to be a few nanosecond delay. I stated earlier seemingly no latency, I assumed it's a given that the laws physics still applied. I see that moral character doesn't.

...

Just wondering, what gerbil crawled up your ass and died?

Richard Edgar · Sep 27, 2003, 05:02 AM

EDIT: I may be looking at the wrong one

Of course you were. You should have been looking at the Origin 3900 machines. Up to 512 processors in a single system image (I've heard rumours that NASA has a 1024 processor one, after prodding SGI hard enough).

Seems rather old, I'm unaware of SGI's current run of MIPS based servers and I don't know much behind the technology of theirs

'Current' in this case means three years old for SGI.

I stated earlier seemingly no latency

No you didn't - at least, not exactly.

Sun are behind in the HPC arena right now, being beaten by both IBM pSeries and SGI Origin/Altix machines (although Altix can't scale as far right now).

olePigeon · 04:39 PM

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
No you didn't - at least, not exactly.

Originally posted by olePigeon:
However, with this new technology from Sun there is seemingly NO hinderence in multi-processors.

Sun are behind in the HPC arena right now, being beaten by both IBM pSeries and SGI Origin/Altix machines (although Altix can't scale as far right now).

Even Dell is outselling them, and they don't even make single image servers. Sun's hurting pretty bad right now. They're sort of the Apple in the server market with impressive technology, but technology that's a hindrance none-of-the-less. I think Sun will move up in the server market again pretty soon, though.

Edit: Fixed tag

Richard Edgar · Sep 30, 2003, 03:19 AM

Firstly, 'hindrance' is not a synonym for 'latency.' Secondly, I wasn't talking about sales. Sales are at best a horrifically crude measure of technological prowess. Usually, they are simply a measure of price.

olePigeon · Sep 30, 2003, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
Firstly, 'hindrance' is not a synonym for 'latency.' Secondly, I wasn't talking about sales. Sales are at best a horrifically crude measure of technological prowess. Usually, they are simply a measure of price.

Latency can be directly synonymous with hindrance, since it�fs a hindrance of some sort that causes the latency (whether it's hardware, software, or even human error.)

I also see that no matter what I say you're going to try to make an argument out of it, even when I agree with you or concede a point. Therefore I consider this closed... unless you want to argue semantics on the word "closed" and quote links from various webpages pointing out my inadequacy in understanding the English language.