/. US DOE gets a $24.5 Million Linux Supercomputer

[Tim Carlson]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Rayson Ho wrote:

> What OS does the machines run?? If it is IA64 HP-UX, we need to
> subtract out a few more million dollars...

If it ran HP-UX, I don't think they would have bought it :)

It will run Linux.

And as Greg pointed out, for some of our core applications (NWChem for
one), the machine may be the best bang for the buck. Could you get more
Tflops for less money?  Of course you could. Factor in the fact that you
need fast access to the SAN, sustained saturation of the interconnect,
some horendous amount of memory bandwidth, etc, etc. The RFP had some
pretty specific (and... err... odd) requirements.

Again.. I don't speak for the MSCF, I know nothing of the other bids,
disclaimer, disclaimer, discaimer :)

One thing I will say is that from my office which is a good 50 yards from
the big computer room, I should be able to feel the heat this thing is
going to put out.

Tim Carlson
Voice: (509) 376 3423
Email: Tim.Carlson at pnl.gov
EMSL UNIX System Support