IBM Roadrunner retires from the supercomputer race

IBM Roadrunner retires from the supercomputer race

For all the money and effort poured into supercomputers, their lifespans can be brutally short. See IBM's Roadrunner as a textbook example: the 116,640-core cluster was smashing records just five years ago, and yet it's already considered so behind the times that Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking it out of action today. Don't mourn too much for the one-time legend, however. The blend of Opteron and Cell processors proved instrumental to understanding energy flow in weapons while also advancing the studies of HIV, nanowires and the known universe. Roadrunner should even be useful in its last gasps, as researchers will have a month to experiment with the system's data routing and OS memory compression before it's dismantled in earnest. It's true that the supercomputer has been eclipsed by cheaper, faster or greener competitors, including its reborn Cray arch-nemesis -- but there's no question that we'll have learned from Roadrunner's brief moment in the spotlight.

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Via: NBC

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory

AMD unveils Open 3.0: an Opteron 6300 platform for the Open Compute Project

AMD Opteron

The Open Compute Project is pushing hard for servers that are both very scalable and streamlined, and AMD is more than willing to help with the launch of its Open 3.0 server platform. The framework combines two Opteron 6300 processors with a motherboard that contains just the essentials, yet scales to meet just about any need in a rackmount system. Among the many, many expansion options are 24 memory slots, six SATA ports for storage, as many as four PCI Express slots and a mezzanine link for custom components. Open 3.0 isn't as flexible as a decentralized, Intel-based prototype being shown at the same time, but it's also much closer to practical reality -- a handful of companies already have access, and on-the-ground sales should start before the end of March. If all goes well, companies will have a Lego-like server base that solves their problems with precision.

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AMD Open 3.0 Brings Simplicity, Power Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness to the Data Center

Unveils First-ever Open, Modular Platform for the Masses

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -1/16/2013

OPEN COMPUTE SUMMIT - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today is launching the AMD Open 3.0 platform (formerly codenamed "Roadrunner,") a radical rethinking of the server motherboard designed to the standards developed by the Open Compute Project. AMD Open 3.0 enables substantial gains in computing flexibility, efficiency and operating cost by simplifying motherboard design with a single base product to address multiple enterprise workloads, including high-performance computing, cloud infrastructure and storage. This innovative design is optimized to eliminate features typically over-provisioned in traditional server offerings.

Today's servers are designed with a "one size fits most" approach incorporating many features and capabilities that can inefficiently utilize space and power, increasing cost. Many mega data centers have engineers developing optimized platforms with the minimum set of components for specific workloads. The desired result is a tailored solution with the ideal combination of power, space and cost. The AMD Open 3.0 platform is designed to easily enable IT professionals to "right size" the server to meet specific compute requirements. Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs are evaluating AMD Open 3.0 as part of their collaboration on the Open Compute Project.

"We became involved with the Open Compute Project very early as we saw a pervasive demand for simplified, energy efficient servers," said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, corporate vice president and general manager, Server, AMD. "Our goal is to reduce data center power consumption and cost yet increase performance and flexibility- we believe that AMD Open 3.0 achieves this."

"This is a realization of the Open Compute Project's mission of 'hacking conventional computing infrastructure,'" said Frank Frankovsky, chairman of the Open Compute Foundation and VP of Hardware Design and Supply Chain at Facebook. "What's really exciting for me here is the way the Open Compute Project inspired AMD and specific consumers to collaboratively bring our 'vanity-free' design philosophy to a motherboard that suited their exact needs."

AMD Open 3.0, powered by the recently announced AMD Opteron[TM] 6300 Series processors, can be installed in all standard 19" rack environments without modification, as well as in Open Rack environments. The AMD Open 3.0 motherboard is a 16" x 16.7" board designed to fit into 1U, 1.5U, 2U or 3U rack height servers. It features two AMD Opteron 6300 Series processors, each with 12 memory sockets (four channels with three DIMMs each,) 6 Serial ATA (SATA) connections per board, one dual channel gigabit Ethernet NIC with integrated management, up to four PCI Express(R) expansion slots, a mezzanine connector for custom module solutions, one serial port and two USB ports. Specific PCI Express card support is dependent on usage case and chassis height.

Pre-production AMD Open 3.0 systems are currently available to select customers. Production systems from Quanta Computer and Tyan are expected to be available through Avnet Electronics Marketing, Penguin Computing and other system integrators before the end of Q1.

"We have eagerly awaited the AMD Open 3.0 platform as it brings the benefits and spirit of the Open Compute Project to a much wider set of customers," said Charles Wuischpard, CEO, Penguin Computing. "As we deliver a new line of Penguin servers based on AMD Open 3.0 and AMD Opteron 6300 Series processors, our high performance computing, cloud and enterprise customers can now deploy application-specific systems using the same core building blocks that are cost, performance and energy optimized and perhaps most important, consistent. We think this initiative eliminates unnecessary complexity and provides new levels of supportability and reliability to the modern data center."

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Source: AMD