3 ms·

I was about to take issue with the term "supercomputer" as this is really just a cluster of standard boxes. But then I looked at the latest Top 500 list (http:

by boulos 12y ago

I was about to take issue with the term "supercomputer" as this is really just a cluster of standard boxes. But then I looked at the latest Top 500 list (http://www.top500.org/list/2014/06/?page=1 http://www.top500.org/list/2014/06/?page=1) and found that 55000 cores and standard gigabit ethernet easily lands you in the top 100 (#73 is a close approximation). I clearly spend too much time thinking farms like this are no big deal and that "obviously" a supercomputer is more like BlueGene/L or Tianhe.

lern_too_spel 12y ago
It's actually four separate clusters. http://m.electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-renders-big-hero-6 http://m.electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-rend... The latency between the sites would kill its linpack performance. It's a "supercomputer" in the same sense that seti@home is a supercomputer -- it's really just a few thousand machines working on an embarrassingly parallel problem.
- thret 12y ago
  Perhaps it is time for the term 'supercomputer' to be redefined? If seti@home is a supercomputer, then the entire internet is also.
  - lambda 12y ago
    In seti@home, they are all being controlled from a single location to work on a single task, while the entire internet consists of independent machines operated independently. That's what allows you to talk about seti@home as a single supercomputer, even though it's somewhat tenuous as the problem is so embarrassingly parallel, it would never compete on any actual supercomputer benchmarks which require low-latency communication between nodes.
- CyberDildonics 12y ago
  Right. Calling it a supercomputer is the same as calling a facebook data center a super computer. The computers don't work together as one system, a frame is queued onto a single computer (and actually multiple frames are queued onto one computer). The latency is the same as your internal network (and actually most companies use nfs and have cheap 4 port routers in offices). One article on Disney says they are using 10gb ethernet, which would make them the first cg company I've heard of to do it.
  - lambda 12y ago
    The first cg company to use 10GbE? I find that hard to believe. I develop storage boxes for video production, and 10GbE is pretty much standard these days, you only go with gigabit if you're being really cheap. We are now starting to sell 40GbE systems on the high end, as well as bonded 10GbE for those that need a bit better than 10 but don't want to shell out for all of the really expensive 40G gear.
    - CyberDildonics 12y ago
      It is the first CG company I have heard of or seen using it. You are talking about a different industry. Not everything in visual effects studios is higher tech than anywhere else. The bottleneck is often expensive network storage and not the network itself. I would imagine that right now studios are looking at 10gb ethernet, especially since SSDs should be making their way into the enterprise level gradually. Many times reading a scene goes at 50MBs. It helps to realize that these studios are not flush with cash. They also might not always spend money in the best places (although usually they know what they are doing or they go out of business). Articles paint them to be super high tech, but really everything is built out of commodity hardware except for the backbone disks and routers. Also upgrading to 10Gb means upgrading thousands of boxes, not just a couple. It could also mean running new cable but you would probably know more about that.

by boulos 12y ago

lern_too_spel 12y ago

It's actually four separate clusters. http://m.electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-renders-big-hero-6 http://m.electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-rend... The latency between the sites would kill its linpack performance. It's a "supercomputer" in the same sense that seti@home is a supercomputer -- it's really just a few thousand machines working on an embarrassingly parallel problem.

thret 12y ago
Perhaps it is time for the term 'supercomputer' to be redefined? If seti@home is a supercomputer, then the entire internet is also.
- lambda 12y ago
  In seti@home, they are all being controlled from a single location to work on a single task, while the entire internet consists of independent machines operated independently. That's what allows you to talk about seti@home as a single supercomputer, even though it's somewhat tenuous as the problem is so embarrassingly parallel, it would never compete on any actual supercomputer benchmarks which require low-latency communication between nodes.
CyberDildonics 12y ago
Right. Calling it a supercomputer is the same as calling a facebook data center a super computer. The computers don't work together as one system, a frame is queued onto a single computer (and actually multiple frames are queued onto one computer). The latency is the same as your internal network (and actually most companies use nfs and have cheap 4 port routers in offices). One article on Disney says they are using 10gb ethernet, which would make them the first cg company I've heard of to do it.
- lambda 12y ago
  The first cg company to use 10GbE? I find that hard to believe. I develop storage boxes for video production, and 10GbE is pretty much standard these days, you only go with gigabit if you're being really cheap. We are now starting to sell 40GbE systems on the high end, as well as bonded 10GbE for those that need a bit better than 10 but don't want to shell out for all of the really expensive 40G gear.
  - CyberDildonics 12y ago
    It is the first CG company I have heard of or seen using it. You are talking about a different industry. Not everything in visual effects studios is higher tech than anywhere else. The bottleneck is often expensive network storage and not the network itself. I would imagine that right now studios are looking at 10gb ethernet, especially since SSDs should be making their way into the enterprise level gradually. Many times reading a scene goes at 50MBs. It helps to realize that these studios are not flush with cash. They also might not always spend money in the best places (although usually they know what they are doing or they go out of business). Articles paint them to be super high tech, but really everything is built out of commodity hardware except for the backbone disks and routers. Also upgrading to 10Gb means upgrading thousands of boxes, not just a couple. It could also mean running new cable but you would probably know more about that.