I have a great idea for a server supercomputer. You have lets say about 10 racks on your server. Each rack could have 2 xeon processors per motherboard, and 2 gig ram or more per board. And a 120g hd or more per motherboard. And cable internet, and no bandwidth limits (somehow maybe you work for bellsouth or something). This could be done right now, but people are probably just too lazy to make anything like that or they don't have enough money. Got your own idea of the ultimate server? Post it here.

Reply

People aren't too lazy, it's just that said setup is expensive, difficult to maintain, and hard to build. All supercomputers work by using thousands of slower processors, but doing it by hand really isn't very efficient (unless you use cheap 500-1000Mhz processors).

Reply

To make a Super Computer like that would be Pointless and expensive. What is the point in spending lots of money to get high end gear when lots of low end gear do the same job if not better.

Reply

See my idea of a good super computer died a long time ago when people decided the best way to build a super computer was to grid network hundreds of computers together into one all amazing one but I still believe that the best way to build a super computer is to make a giant computer.

See the ram inside your CPU (The L2 cache) is THE best RAM that is produced in the world. It is so exspensive to make that's why you only get 1MB or 2MB of it in the processor, (that and you can't hold a lot more without making the chip bigger.) If you could get a nice 64bit Motherboard and run like 8GB of that RAM in a 64bit OS with an Intel Itanium 2 processor, you would be astounded at how unbelievably fast that computer could work. And that's only with 8GB of RAM think about having the the full amount of RAM a 64bit Operation System could handle? And that's using a conventional OS as well, Real Super Computers don't use Windows...

Reply

A question about the ram mentioned above:

What is the bus speed that this ram works at? I know SDRAM runs at 133 mh/z and DDR RAM runs at about 266 mh/z (correct me if I'm mistaken) but what is the bus speed of the ram inside a processor?

Reply

(SRAM)Static RAM is a type of RAM that holds its data without external refresh, for as long as power is supplied to the circuit. This is contrasted to dynamic RAM (DRAM), which must be refreshed many times per second in order to hold its data contents.

So actually SRAM has no bus speed because it requires no refresh, you could say that SRAM has an infinite BUS speed. The only problem is that SRAM is bigger than DRAM (DDR, SDRAM, etc.) But SRAM is similar to CPU in that it is made up a bunch of little transistors, in the millions normally. And again you have to pay byte for byte with this RAM so you et what you pay for, but if you wanted just 32MB of SRAM you'd have to work probably a few years to get it payed for.

Reply

The problem, of course, with building one gigantic computer packed with an ultra-fast processor and "more RAM than a traffic jam" is heat. If one could run a computer that wouldn't give off heat (which is physically impossible), that may be the way to go, but then parallel processing does have it's perks, such as being able to break a big operation down into more quickly manageable chunks (like ten moderately powerful trucks pulling an object versus one extra-powerful truck doing it alone).

Reply

But on the market today are Freon Cooling system for home PC's and such. Pretty much that turns your computer into a mobile refridgerator. What if that technology could be made many times bigger?

Because the problem I see with Parallel computing is the time it takes to transfer operations from computer from computer. No matter how fast computers are networked when working with an hardware intense application the time it takes transferring data from computer to computer will add up over time. When everything is condensed into one big computer most of that time will eliminated because all of the memory and power needed to run the application is all local and needs no calls to other functions.


It's like in C++ when you use an object heavy program or a function heavy program, it takes longer to run than a program that is simply coded into the Main() function. Because of the time it takes in the procoesser to call each individual function.

Reply

I actually know a guy that does this. He has a hosting server I believe as his harddrive, and hosting processors or something running his computer. You would have to PM him. His display on here is mxweb. But anyway, He beasically has a monster I wish I could give you more details.

Reply

Gondero, if there were that may processors packed into such a small space, even Freon couldn't cool it fast enough to overcome the heat being expelled (plus, Freon is illegal in some places).

Reply