Meet Gordon, the World's First SSD-Based Supercomputer

[turbolover22]

Brand New SSD's and it is only 48th on the list of most powerful computers? Somebody didn't plan their other hardware correctly.

 

[juxtaposer]

[citation][nom]Tmanishere[/nom]When I think of Gordon, Gordon Freeman comes to mind. Not Flash Gordon.[/citation]
Same here, I think because I saw the link here immediately following a video game ad on my facebook page.

 

[A Bad Day]

How many HDDs would it take to match Gordon's IOPS?...

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]de5_roy[/nom]comissioner gordonor batgirl...[/citation]
[citation][nom]Tmanishere[/nom]When I think of Gordon, Gordon Freeman comes to mind. Not Flash Gordon.[/citation]
Ah. so it seems i'm the only one who saw a lot of intel hardware going into this and thought Gordon Moore...

 

[nottheking]

The real question about it is... But will it be the savior of the universe?
[citation][nom]Tmanishere[/nom]When I think of Gordon, Gordon Freeman comes to mind. Not Flash Gordon.[/citation]
Even though there's no such thing as "Freeman memory?"

[citation][nom]tasrill[/nom]Maybe they plan on starting the singularity with it so have to put processing in terms of acceleration[/citation]
And people voted your comment down? I guess no one really appreciates (or possibly even understands) derivatives like that.

[citation][nom]turbolover22[/nom]Brand New SSD's and it is only 48th on the list of most powerful computers? Somebody didn't plan their other hardware correctly.[/citation]
The TOP500 list ranks computers on a specific benchmark, LINPACK: it's very good at demonstrating real-world 64-bit, floating-point SIMD capabilities, which is relevant for a lot of HPC applications, but hardly all of them. At any rate, using SSDs yields no benefit on that benchmark: it was for other, more vastly data-intensive applications, that the machine was designed for. Ones where the chief bottleneck wouldn't be how fast the CPUs could crank, but rather how quickly it could seek and produce stored data.

 

[seezur]

hmm..I'm surprised this is the first one. Is it the first in the top 500 or is it just the first to use SSD as it's primary means of storage? I may be wrong but it seems like SSD would have made it's way into a super computer before this.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]seezur[/nom]hmm..I'm surprised this is the first one. Is it the first in the top 500 or is it just the first to use SSD as it's primary means of storage? I may be wrong but it seems like SSD would have made it's way into a super computer before this.[/citation]
I'm pretty sure they mean it's the first in the TOP 500. I'm not surprised that it was all HDD-based machines before; as I mentioned, HPC demands tend to not care so much about drive read-write performance, and more about raw math, with some bottlenecking for the main memory. Typically such applications tend to have all the relevant data reside within RAM at time of executing, and doesn't need to use much disk space for the results.

 

[BryanFRitt]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]"a theoretical peak performance of 280+ Teraflops per second"Teraflops is 'trillions of floating point operations per second', so no need for 'per second' following it.[/citation]
Ok, maybe it's not likely, but maybe, its 'floating point operations per second' is increasing every second!
Similar to acceleration:
Position- > Velocity -> Acceleration -> Jolt/Jerk/Surge/Lurch -> Snap/Jounce -> Crackle/Trounce -> Pop/Pounce -> Lock -> Drop -> Shot -> Put
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_%28vector%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jounce

 

[BryanFRitt]

[citation][nom]BryanFRitt[/nom]Ok, maybe it's not likely, but maybe, its 'floating point operations per second' is increasing every second! Similar to accelerationosition- > Velocity -> Acceleration -> Jolt/Jerk/Surge/Lurch -> Snap/Jounce -> Crackle/Trounce -> Pop/Pounce -> Lock -> Drop -> Shot -> PutSources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_%28vector%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jounce[/citation]
I just set myself up to be made fun of , I don't really think its 'floating point operations per second' are increasing every second.

 

[jebusv20]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]"a theoretical peak performance of 280+ Teraflops per second"Teraflops is 'trillions of floating point operations per second', so no need for 'per second' following it.[/citation]
Its accelerating... dah, thats moores law for yah

 

[samanosuke47]

put it in my closet, I wanna play sims 2.

 

[AtotehZ]

I've wondered when someone would pull this off. Seeing it is definitely not a disappointment. For too long systems have been limited by storage capabilities speedwise, now the supercomputers we rely on in science and the like has taken a giant step forward.

Very good job!

 

[halcyon]

I bet Gordon is that much more super expensive.

 

[secretxax]

Jegg Gordon anyone? LOL XD

 

[secretxax]

I meant Jeff Gordon..

 

[Guest]

The article's statement that the price tag was "paid by the National Science Foundation (NSF)" is wrong. It should state "funds were allocated out of the NSF's budget, and paid for by the taxpayers of the USA." Lest we forget where all this money comes from - it ain't free!

 

[RustyFerretStudios]

lol "Teraflops"

 

[Guest]

Yes, But how many fps in battlefield 3 tho