[Beowulf] Cray uses Supermicro blades for CX1

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/356/1051356/cray-supermicro-blades-cx1 


Cray uses Supermicro blades for CX1

CeBit 2009 Deskbottom supercomputer

By Charlie Demerjian

Tuesday, 10 March 2009, 16:33

YOU MAY HAVE heard about the Cray CX1, a 'desktop cluster' in the vein of the
Tyan Typhoon. They are interesting little beasts, and with the addition of
Nehalems, now have the grunt to be a deskbottom supercomputer.

Cray_LX1

The front of the beastlet

The CX1 isn't a breakthrough in technology by any means, it is just a product
to fill a niche. The machine itself has eight blades that will each take two
Nehalem EPs, and a claimed 32G of RAM/blade. We won't bring up that Nehalems
use ram in 6G increments, if you can count to 32 evenly in sixes, you are
using a different base than most people.

In addition to Nehalems, you can opt for a storage blade, normally you only
get two drives per blade or a GPGPU blade. Out the back, there is Infiniband
or Ethernet, take your pick. That said, the cable routing could use a little
cleaning up...

LX1_rear

Back of the beastlet

Cray probably doesn't want you to know that the blades are in fact Supermicro
blades, so you could probably get away with a little less cost should you
shop around. That said, the version you see above, with four Harpertown x 2
blades, a GPGPU blade and active noise cancellation is available online for
about $30K.

It may be a little while to Christmas, but what tot wouldn't be delighted to
see one of these under the tree?