Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these. Sorry I couldn't resist.
You forgot to say First Post!
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Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
21–30 of 159 posts
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#22Hence my simple theory of aesthetics:
— if the best stuff from then is still better than good stuff from now, it's art
— if the best stuff from then is worse than bad stuff from now, it's technology
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
r/homelab will have a field-day getting those nodes up, some people will want just one for practicality, some people will want at least a couple and a IB switch just for the novelty of it.
I can't imagine anyone from r/homelab has an SGI 8600 E-cell laying around that they could slap these blades into.
I can imagine it, some people on there are ridiculous, but yeah in my experience these supercomputer nodes are a lot more integrated/proprietary than most standard server hardware. It's not straightforward to just boot one up without all the support infrastructure. I'd assume they'd mostly be torn down and parted out.
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#24I wonder who buys these. Crypto miners? My institution would make it nearly impossible to buy a secondhand supercomputer.
>Crypto miners?
I think mining crypto with these would burn far too much energy compared to the ASICS in use.
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#25>Components of the Cheyenne Supercomputer Installed Configuration: SGI ICE™ XA. E-Cells: 14 units weighing 1500 lbs. each. E-Racks: 28 units, all water-cooled Nodes: 4,032 dual socket units configured as quad-node blades Processors: 8,064 units of E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP) Total Cores: 145,152 Memory: DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank, 64 GB per node, with 3 High Memory E-Cells…
I can find a bunch of the E5-2697v4 CPUs on eBay in the $30-40 range.
I wonder if there is a market for the SGI hardware.
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#26I wonder what the point of liquid cooling such a system was. Were they pressed for space?
Built in a bunker under a mountain, so reduced airflow, plus need to hide heat signatures from outside surveillance? Also, likely they had infrastructure available, from the nuclear power they use.
Cheyenne Wyoming not Cheyenne mountain.
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#27>Components of the Cheyenne Supercomputer Installed Configuration: SGI ICE™ XA. E-Cells: 14 units weighing 1500 lbs. each. E-Racks: 28 units, all water-cooled Nodes: 4,032 dual socket units configured as quad-node blades Processors: 8,064 units of E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP) Total Cores: 145,152 Memory: DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank, 64 GB per node, with 3 High Memory E-Cells…
Given that the individual nodes are just x86_64 Xeons and run linux... it would be interesting to part it out for sale as individual, but functional, nodes to people. There are a lot of people would like to have a ~2016 era watercooled 1U server from a supercomputer that was once near the top of the Top500 just to show to people.
Get little commemorative plaques for each one and sell for $200 each or so.
edit: it seems each motehrboard is a dual CPU board and so there are 4032 nodes, but the nodes are in blades that likely need their rack for power. But I think individual cabinets would be cool to own.
There are 144 nodes per cabinet... so 28 cabinets. I'd pay a fair amount just to own a cabinet to stick in my garage if I was near there.
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#28> It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the gate on Earth
Samantha CarterRe: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#29For those curious, Cheyenne is a supercomputer from 2016/2017 that launched on the 20th spot in the top500 super computers. It was decommissioned in 2023 after pandemic lead to a two year operation extension. It has a peak compute of 5.34 petaflops, 313TB of memory, and gobbles 1.7MW.
In comparison, 18 A100 GPUs would have 5.6 petaflops and 1.4 TB vram, consuming 5.6 kw.
The speed of processing and interconnect is orders of magnitude faster for an A100 cluster - 1 8 gpu pod server will cost around $200k, so around $600k more or less beats the supercomputer performance (price I'm searching seems wildly variable, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Re: Cheyenne Super Computer Auction
#30>Components of the Cheyenne Supercomputer Installed Configuration: SGI ICE™ XA. E-Cells: 14 units weighing 1500 lbs. each. E-Racks: 28 units, all water-cooled Nodes: 4,032 dual socket units configured as quad-node blades Processors: 8,064 units of E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP) Total Cores: 145,152 Memory: DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank, 64 GB per node, with 3 High Memory E-Cells…
Given that the individual nodes are just x86_64 Xeons and run linux... it would be interesting to part it out for sale as individual, but functional, nodes to people. There are a lot of people would like to have a ~2016 era watercooled 1U server from a supercomputer that was once near the top of the Top500 just to show to people. Get little commemorative plaques for each one and sell for $200 each or so. edit: it see…
These are blades, so there is probably some kind of container chassis required to run them.
Using them as desktop PCs would likely be a challenge.