4 ms·

This is very cool. However I am wondering, what could it be used for nowadays? I would do some benchmarking, I don't know, e.g. LINPACK or maybe even distribu

by saganus 11y ago

This is very cool. However I am wondering, what could it be used for nowadays? I would do some benchmarking, I don't know, e.g. LINPACK or maybe even distributed.net projects, BOINC ones, etc. Other than that? Maybe you could do some 3D renderings? could you put it head to head with a GPU doing something embarrassingly parallel? probably not with anything like a Titan X, but maybe it could give a run for its money to something less powerful? I am very intrigued by what you could achieve.

kjs3 11y ago
You could run a number of real IBM OSes on it and learn mainframes. There's still a huge market for mainframes. You could run a couple of hundred or thousand Linux VMs for fun. It's an IBM mainframe...it's not about how fast the CPU is, it's about how fast the whole system is (cpu, memory, i/o).
- saganus 11y ago
  Would it be feasible to say, install Kubernetes? I've read that a lot of what made zSeries "special" was that they had special purpose chips for a lot of things, from I/O to encryption and other stuff (not really well versed in the area so please correct me if I'm wrong). Not sure how many of those special features you can use if you use Linux instead of z/OS, but could it be in principle something tractable or not even close?=
  - kjs3 11y ago
    I suppose you can load whatever Linux thingy you want that has a port (I've never tried Kubernetes). That said, the thing that makes machines like this "special" is the aggregate throughput and availability you can get out of them (the dedicated processors are part of that). To really unlock that, you do want to run z/OS and it's tools, and then run things like Linux on top of that. It's more complicated than "this is just another kind of Linux box".
fencepost 11y ago
Electric heat. These days it's a somewhat inefficienct electric heater that also can do some computing tasks.
- robotresearcher 11y ago
  Its efficiency at heating compared to an actual heater is very, very close to identical.
  - tgflynn 11y ago
    Not sure why you say "very, very close". The efficiency for heating of all electrical devices is identical, unless they're somehow transmitting energy to a different location.
    - Kliment 11y ago
      The highest-efficiency electric heaters use heat pumps for efficiencies way above unity.
      - tgflynn 11y ago
        Heat pumps aren't usually called electric heaters though. Electric heaters are usually considered to be devices that generate heat by consuming electricity, not devices that transfer heat. In any case a heat pump obviously falls into the category of a device that transmits energy to a different location, which my comment excluded.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      > unless they're somehow transmitting energy to a different location. Computers do this in the form of sound, fans, magnetic fields and network connections. Of course, that's a very small amount of energy.
      - robotresearcher 11y ago

by saganus 11y ago

kjs3 11y ago

You could run a number of real IBM OSes on it and learn mainframes. There's still a huge market for mainframes. You could run a couple of hundred or thousand Linux VMs for fun. It's an IBM mainframe...it's not about how fast the CPU is, it's about how fast the whole system is (cpu, memory, i/o).

saganus 11y ago
Would it be feasible to say, install Kubernetes? I've read that a lot of what made zSeries "special" was that they had special purpose chips for a lot of things, from I/O to encryption and other stuff (not really well versed in the area so please correct me if I'm wrong). Not sure how many of those special features you can use if you use Linux instead of z/OS, but could it be in principle something tractable or not even close?=
- kjs3 11y ago
  I suppose you can load whatever Linux thingy you want that has a port (I've never tried Kubernetes). That said, the thing that makes machines like this "special" is the aggregate throughput and availability you can get out of them (the dedicated processors are part of that). To really unlock that, you do want to run z/OS and it's tools, and then run things like Linux on top of that. It's more complicated than "this is just another kind of Linux box".

fencepost 11y ago

Electric heat. These days it's a somewhat inefficienct electric heater that also can do some computing tasks.

robotresearcher 11y ago
Its efficiency at heating compared to an actual heater is very, very close to identical.
- tgflynn 11y ago
  Not sure why you say "very, very close". The efficiency for heating of all electrical devices is identical, unless they're somehow transmitting energy to a different location.
  - Kliment 11y ago
    The highest-efficiency electric heaters use heat pumps for efficiencies way above unity.
    - tgflynn 11y ago
      Heat pumps aren't usually called electric heaters though. Electric heaters are usually considered to be devices that generate heat by consuming electricity, not devices that transfer heat. In any case a heat pump obviously falls into the category of a device that transmits energy to a different location, which my comment excluded.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    > unless they're somehow transmitting energy to a different location. Computers do this in the form of sound, fans, magnetic fields and network connections. Of course, that's a very small amount of energy.
    - robotresearcher 11y ago