$12,000 Cray Computer

[johnnymk]

I wonder what this would have cost a decade ago?

http://www.deskeng.com/articles/aaasas.htm

Cray Inc. has reduced the entry-level pricing for its HPC (high-performance computing) systems with the introduction of the Cray CX1-LC (Light Configuration) deskside supercomputer. Cray says that, with a base price of less than $12,000, the CX1-LC system will allow more engineers and scientists to realize the productivity benefits of supercomputing.

Available immediately, the Cray CX1-LC is designed around Cray's cluster architecture. It uses familiar working environments such as Windows HPC Server 2008 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This means that the CX1-LC supercomputer can place the dual benefits of a very high-end workstation and a small cluster at a user's desk. The Cray CX1-LC system can also be upgraded to a full Cray CX1 supercomputer.

"The original Cray CX1 system has proven to be a productive, powerful, and easy-to-use HPC product for a growing number of researchers and scientists who have turned to Cray for their deskside supercomputing needs," said Ian Miller, senior vice president of the productivity and solutions group and marketing at Cray in a press statement. "We expect the Cray CX1-LC will extend these benefits to an even larger number of HPC users."

The CX1-LC is available with up to eight Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series and is certified as an Intel Cluster Ready System. It supports up to four compute blades, including visualization and GPGPU blades in a simplified Cray CX1 chassis. As with the original Cray CX1 system, the Cray CX1-LC can be configured with storage options that include solid-state drives (SSDs) or large capacity, fixed-drive storage blades.

The Cray CX1-LC system introduces two new, lower-cost compute blades than the standard blades offered in the Cray CX1 system. One supports Gigabit Ethernet and is oriented to the workstation user. The other offers DDR InfiniBand and is oriented to the small cluster user.

For more information, visit Cray, Inc.

[DarkFury]

The real question is... "How much does it overclock?"

Can you short a few pins to make it perform as well as a full Cray computer?

[MrGreg]

I'd rather have an Azul box, but I'm a java juy.

[nate el bueno]

I recall Michael Cichton mentioning in Jurassic Park that they used to be 250k. I think...that's the number that sticks in my head.

[Maarchk]

What would we even do with that stuff?

Although the concept of cloud computing is pretty cool. But I imagine they'll always have super computers. Some will just be umm, more super than others.

And 250 k sounds right. I support Nate.

[Jeffbx]

Ooh, more than $250k - I've bought SGI machines for that much.

I think the last generation of Crays (XT5) started at about a half million & went up from there, so $12k is crazy cheap - that's in the price range of an IBM AIX or Sun worktation.

[Prngr44]

Although the concept of cloud computing is pretty cool. But I imagine they'll always have super computers.

That was my exact thought too.

I just spent yesterday in a tech training forum where one of the presentations was about using Amazon's S3 service for cloud computing. It was pretty dang slick.

[MrGreg]

Cloud computing services (like S3) are great if you need to be able to scale CPUs very quickly, but the limitation we've hit with them is the network bandwidth. Each node typically shares a gigabit port with several other nodes. Most of the work I'm doing, we easily fill a gigabit port, and frequently use something faster (such as infiniband), so these nodes with fractional gig ports aren't very useful for us.

But if you don't need that much bandwidth (and most probably don't) then I do think it's an interesting service worth looking into.