Topic: Top 500 supercomputer list

[Nemesis]

Link to site

Linux            389
Windows        2
Unix            60
BSD Based     4
Mixed          42
Mac OS         3

[GE-Raven]

Wow.. Windows has 2 of em?  Damn nice showing for a product not meant for such computers.

I always love the idea of the "super computer" which really has very little usefulness outside of huge number crunching.  With the realization of distributed processing systems (My understanding is that MS next OS is to offer business users the ability to share processing load across a network to "safe" domain machines) I will take 100 mediocre computers over the worlds top 500 supercomputers.

My question has long been would you be able to count a massive Novell cluster as a supercomputer? 

GE-Raven.

[Nemesis]

Its not the first time a Windows computer has been in the top 500.  I know of one other in the best and likely and believe that there were others.

Wow.. Windows has 2 of em?  Damn nice showing for a product not meant for such computers.

GE-Raven.

Actually your wrong.  Link 
System #106

System Name      Rainier
Site    Microsoft Windows HPC Group
System Family    Dell PowerEdge Cluster
System Model    PowerEdge 1955
Computer    PowerEdge 1955, 1.86 GHz, Cisco Infiniband, Windows OS
Vendor    Dell
Application area    Software
Main Memory    2048 GB
Installation Year    2007
 
Operating System    Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003
Memory    2048 GB
Interconnect    Infiniband SDR
Processor    Intel EM64T Xeon 53xx (Clovertown) 1860 MHz (7.44 GFlops)

The "Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003"

Supercomputing power of high-performance computing (HPC) is now available on a Windows Platform. Accelerate your time-to-insight when solving computational problems specific to your industry in a familiar Windows environment.

2nd Link

At the Supercomputing Conference this week, Microsoft announced the availability of a software developer kit (SDK) for Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (previously known as Windows Server 2003, High-Performance Computing Edition). The SDK will be available to qualifying partners and will provide the necessary tools for developers to build new and more integrated applications.

Not originally designed for super computers but vendor customized for it.

How many of the Operating systems on that list were designed for supercomputers?  None that I know of.  Unix and I think BSD/Unix were originally for mainframes the rest for microcomputers.

[GE-Raven]

I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the the majority of the Linux systems weren't customized for the specific computers or their tasks.  Especially given the atypical ways in which a supercomputer is designed.  To not do so seems odd.  Now why anyone with a super computer would want a gui is also beyond me.

I am aware of HPC, however I really just don't understand "why".

GE-Raven

[Nemesis]

I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the the majority of the Linux systems weren't customized for the specific computers or their tasks.  Especially given the atypical ways in which a supercomputer is designed.  To not do so seems odd.  Now why anyone with a super computer would want a gui is also beyond me.

GE-Raven

I'm sure all the Operating System involved were tweaked for super computer work, even those designed for mainframes. 

I wonder why Microsoft continues to keep the GUI integrated the way they do.  I suspect that many programs would do much better without it.  Various server based programs and recovery tools especially.  Anything designed to be remotely used or administered rather than run while sitting at the machine has little use for a GUI (in my opinion).  You would probably know better than I as I believe you work with such things.

I am aware of HPC, however I really just don't understand "why".

GE-Raven

Ego I think. 

Gates and Ballmer tossed out the "Linux is a toy Operating System" for some time and Linux backers asked (rightly in my opinion) why a "toy Operating System" was on so many Super Computers when the "professional" Windows System was on none.  Their ego (and marketing) would not allow the "toy" to have such a good talking point exclusively.  Just my opinion of course.  Others may have a better explanation.

[Just plain old Punisher]

Windows wasn't designed for super computer use.

[Lloyd007]

I bet the no 1 supercomputer in the world can't even play Oblivion 

Seriously tho M$ was never into supercomputers and even if they were it wouldn't work because from what little I know about supercomps is people like to use em for all sorts of things from specific models to general number crunching and Windows is so tightfisted and inflexible about tasks and other things its no wonder they only have 2.

Interesting how the 'mixed' category has only 1/4 the number of computers in the top 500 yet has 3/4 of the processors as the Linux category.

Also I think soon IBM is coming out with a supercomputer that would take out the top 100 combined in number crunching power. Dunno where I read that and its not really related to this discussion but that's an interesting little factoid.

[Nemesis]

Windows wasn't designed for super computer use.

Read Ravens comments and mine above.  NONE of the operating systems were designed for super computers.  Windows for certain was optimized for it by Microsoft.  The others I'm sure each were modified for this use as well.

[Nemesis]

As of June 2022 of the 500 top super computers ALL run Linux.