Marc Hamilton's WeblogMarc Hamilton's WeblogThe Year of Open Storage- March 21, 2008 If you click on the "Resources" tab on the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid User Portal you will quickly notice that TACC's Ranger supercomputer has 2x the CPU power, 2x the memory, and 2x the storage of the previous 17 NSF TeraGrid funded systems combined. This rapid advance in supercomputer power has been enabled, in part, by open computing. The Ranger system uses the same AMD Opteron quad core CPUs that you will very shortly be able to buy from every major vendor, the same type of...http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/the_year_of_open_storage 2008 Education Essentials Matching Grant Program- March 17, 2008 Ever wonder why schools tend to have out of date computer equipment for their students It isn't always lack of money. Often, part of the problem is vendors who try to dump outdated equipment on schools for a "bargain" price. Of course, thanks to Moore's law, selling last year's model for 30% off, when current models are 2x as fast, isn't really a bargain, is it Especially when you have to pay to power and cool the system. At Sun, we think every student should have access to the latest hardware,.http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/2008_education_essentials_matching_grant TACC Quarterly NSF Review- March 5, 2008 I'm sitting at the National Science Foundation's quarterly review of Ranger which is now in full production (hint, click on the "Resources" tab). I walked through the amazingly compact data center again early this morning. If a supercomputer can be called beautiful, Ranger is certainly that. What is probably most amazing are the science results that have already been achieved in the first few months of use which several users have presented. But the numbers themselves are also amazing....http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/tacc_quarterly_nsf_review |