Beauty & Supercomputing ( Linux )
5 May 2014 9:30:22 UTC
Topic 197573
(moderation:
I fell over this article outlining the recent top 10 Linux beasts. Of course one drools at their sheer/raw power but I think they look really good, sort of like the way Dyson vacuum cleaners look good. I like #1 [ Tianhe-2 (NUDT) ] for it's Space Odyssey 2001 feel, and #7 [ Stampede (Dell) ] looks Tron-ish.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Beauty & Supercomputing ( Linux )
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Nice racks!
I want one of
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I want one of those.
Hoping not to hijack this thread but for those of you who might be thinking of moving to Linux, Ubuntu released its next long term solution (LTS) on 4/19/14: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. This release will be supported for 5 years.
I have been a "fan" of Ubuntu because of this long term support. You should read the release notes on their site however before committing to a switch or if this is your first venture into Linux.
The fastest computer in the
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The fastest computer in the World right now runs Kylin Linux, I looked it up and see this "Kylin is an open source operating system, based on FreeBSD, and developed by academics at the National University of Defense Technology in the People's Republic of China. It was first released in 2007 and intended to be used by the Chinese military and government organizations."
The next paragraph says "A New Kylin Release Using Ubuntu
In 2013, Canonical partnered with an agency within the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MII) and announced that a new Linux-based operating system with the same name would be released using Ubuntu.
According to this article on ServerWatch, the new version will be called Ubuntu Kylin ("UbuntuKylin"). Among the China-specific features that Ubuntu Kylin will include are language localization as well as Chinese input methods and calendars. Ubuntu Kylin is also expected to eventually support integration with Chinese web services such as Baidu and Taobao."
Still a far cry from the days
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Still a far cry from the days of the early Cray machines which were really designed to look stylish. Remember the "waterfall"/"aquarium" heat exchanger?
HB
I can't get enough of
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I can't get enough of supercomputer and even data center pictures and tours on YouTube, etc. And articles describing their specs, power usage, sustainability considerations, etc.
Somewhat related: I also follow a subreddit dedicated to pictures of servers of all stripes, not just those dedicated to computing. It does have an unfortunate name, but I promise it's safe for work: http://www.reddit.com/r/serverporn
https://twitter.com/ShaftEvans
RE: I can't get enough of
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I LOVED the pics, and NO it is NOT 'porn' like most people think of 'porn', it is SERVER 'porn', ie pictures of high end computers!
Those fires are certainly a
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Those fires are certainly a worry! An acquaintance of mine is a fire investigator ( insurance/forensic ) and tells me of the following risk : paper lint. You have a very active printer area with a fine fluff of essentially cellulose being constantly created by the handling ( machine or human ) of the paper. If you have an upward facing power plug, say in a powerboard, the drifting/falling lint enters in through any unused power pin slots. Thus landing right next to and between metallic components with a voltage differential. Under the right circumstances, admittedly not very common but unfortunately so, it will ignite the paper particles and hence cause a flash of combustion. Whether that proceeds further is another matter, but if nothing else you have a source of ignition. I can't find a link to refer you to, but this has been studied.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Those fires are
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When I was a firefighter we went to a Server Room fire one time and THAT was the cause, small World!! I always thought they used Halon in ALL Server Rooms as the fire suppression stuff, turns out they use REGULAR OLD WATER now! With all the new circuit boards and no more tubes etc, they just keep the power off until they dry everything out with hair dryers and high temps. Then they turn things back on incrementally and are back up and running with less expense then the Halon was! It took them 2 days to get the last one back up and running, it was a room about 25 feet by 35 feet. They DO have water filters in the system to make sure clean water comes out, not the rusty, been sitting in the pipe for years stuff that normally comes out.