[Beowulf] Rackable / SGI

[Kilian CAVALOTTI]

On Wednesday 01 April 2009 16:19:57 John Hearns wrote:
> > There are a few services/integration HPC
> > companies in the EU, but not any that I'm aware of selling their own
> > hardware, as Scalable or Penguin do.
>
> ????? I know that both Streamline and Clustervision will do you a
> Supermicro build.
> I think you are talking to the wrong people to be honest!
>
> I put in a very nice machine for QMU in London with Supermicro twins
> and Infiniband.

My bad here for not being explicit enough. By "their own hardware", I meant 
"hardware they put a lot of thought in, that they carefully conceived and 
designed, and have manufactured according to their own needs and guidelines", 
not "Supermicro boxes". Not that Supermicro boxes are low grade or not a good 
fit for the job, just that they generally are multi-purpose components, not 
necessarily designed with HPC as a first concern. And Supermicro is not quite 
a small company either.

Anyway, I was thinking about companies like Penguin or Scalable, designing 
their own hardware products, like Relions or JackRabbits, and not just 
reselling Supermicro boxes. Unless I'm mistaken on the fact that those systems 
are somewhat different from off-the-shelf boxes. 

I don't know about Streamline, but AFAIK, Clustervision "just" resells big 
names hardware, they don't make their own. It's not a bad thing per se, just a 
way to point out the fact that HPC-wise, the market is pretty different here 
and there, and that purchasing options seem sparser to me in the EU compared 
to the US.

So, to get back to the original discussion, SGI disappearing from the 
landscape means one less option to choose from. Considering the fact that 
those options are already kind of fewer than in the US, the relative loss is 
more perceptible.

Cheers,
-- 
Kilian