$25k supercomputer is world’s most powerful ‘desktop’
By John Lister
However long you’ve been around computers, one name has always been the ultimate in processing power: Cray. Now the firm best known for machines the size of rooms is producing a machine which will fit on your desktop – though it’s many times more powerful than anything you’ll find at Best Buy.
The Cray CX1 starts at $25,000, with the range’s top model going for around $60,000. The machine can run up to 512GB (that’s GB, not MB) of memory and store up to 4 terabytes (4,000 GB) of data. The top machine in the range incorporates 16 different processors. Put short, this ain’t for running Minesweeper.
Clearly this isn’t a machine that’s going to get any serious business among home users, but there does appear to be a market among firms which need ultra-powerful computers but are limited in budget and physical space.
The first sale was to UCLA’s neurological imaging lab, whose chief technological officer Rico Magospic says the machine will solve the need for intense computing power. “Having the power of a Cray supercomputer that is simple and compact is very attractive and necessary, considering the physical constraints we face in our data centres today.”
The smaller machine is also far less power-hungry than traditional supercomputers, which could appeal to firms motivated by tough financial times or a passion for the environment.
Cray has worked on the project with Microsoft and the CX1 comes configured with the Windows High Performance Computing Server. That’s a rarity among such high-powered computers as most users prefer to run Linux because it’s seen as more stable.
Indeed, it appears this is part of a concerted push by Microsoft to establish itself in the supercomputer market. You’d think firms able to drop $25k plus on a single computer would already have some serious technical expertise, but the cheaper such machines get, the more likely it is you’ll have buyers who are influenced by already being comfortable with Windows-based systems.
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September 19th, 2008
so this one is for what application?
September 21st, 2008
Microsoft Office System 2010 Optimus Edition running on Microsoft Windows Vista 2010.
Although this Cray is the world’s “most powerful supercomputer” it will encounter great difficulty running the above application and OS due to the sub-par graphics card. It is highly recommended that you turn off Vista 2010’s “Broken Airo Glasses” graphics engine and not start more than one Office applications at a time.
Microsoft is aware of this problem and it might be fixed in the next Service Pack, if you are lucky.
November 27th, 2008
“However long you’ve been around computers, one name has always been the ultimate in processing power: Cray”
And however long you’ve been around computers, there is one name that has *never* been associated with processing power: Microsoft.
“[...] the CX1 comes configured with the Windows High Performance Computing Server. That’s a rarity among such high-powered computers as most users prefer to run Linux because it’s seen as more stable.”
John, what’s wrong with you? Is it that you don’t know the truth, or that you can’t admit it? Repeat after me: Linux is not “seen” as more stable, Linux *is* more stable. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
“Indeed, it appears this is part of a concerted push by Microsoft to establish itself in the supercomputer market.”
And I’m sure that they’ll be just as successful as they have been with the Xbox, the Zune, Vista …
“You’d think firms able to drop $25k plus on a single computer would already have some serious technical expertise”
You’d certainly think that such firms would have more nous than to purchase a serious computer that is hobbled by a toy operating system.