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NASA's new Pleiades supercomputer — Parallax Forums

NASA's new Pleiades supercomputer

MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
edited 2016-11-30 19:53 in General Discussion
Based at NASA Ames, it is named the the 13th fastest in the world.


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Comments

  • This is how my PC felt when I went to 8 core, 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD.

  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    My 16GB 4 core PC feels like a 16KB IBM PC from 1981..
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2016-12-01 13:10
    You guy's have a supercomputer compared to:

    My 2009 quad core 8GB DDR, 1.5 TB HD felt like a race horse back when I was into gaming. Feeling it's oats today, but still fast enough for what I do. It stays off the net though, not bogged down by security updates and all the other web garbage.
    I would install a graphics card in a new computer, it seems to make all the difference compared to an integrated GPU. Video editing-rendering is quick with NVIDIA co-processing.
    Startup and HD indexing is where it shows it's age, time consuming.

    pic before being re-done in another case in 2009.

    Not personally helping keep the PC industry afloat.


    EDIT: I migrated out of PC gaming when I got into microcontrollers, does that say anything?
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  • Logitech G15 :) I had the clunkier one with more buttons on the left side. Now I have a G105. Looking at the G15 I sure do miss it.

    Santa???
  • The G15, I don't use any of the added functions anymore, buttons are just dust collector's. One of the main reasons for buying it was the illuminated keyboard. Actually the characters are too small and the lighting is too dim, to see in the dark without glasses. I guess I need to start looking for the senior model, with large keys. -_-
  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    edited 2016-12-01 19:32
    They save me a ton of time, I have to type the same stuff over and over on a daily basis. Most importantly they allow me to circumvent systems that don't support copy and paste :) Shhhh...
  • Oh I know what it was about the older larger G15. It had an actual volume knob on the keyboard. I really miss that. With this keyboard you have to program a macro to control the volume, else you're FN + click x 100 = 1/4 volume.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Keep hold of your 2009 quad core whatever. Nothing has got much faster since then. Just get it an SSD. That simple and cheap upgrade dramatically speeds up boot time and general usage. The most amazing upgrade I ever made to any machines.

  • Heater. wrote: »
    Keep hold of your 2009 quad core whatever. Nothing has got much faster since then. Just get it an SSD. That simple and cheap upgrade dramatically speeds up boot time and general usage. The most amazing upgrade I ever made to any machines.

    It's a:
    AMD Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2GHz running Win. Vista HP SP2

    Thanks for that reassurance Heater. That is last thing I want to do, is look for a new computer and OS, oh! what a pain.

    As far as the SSHD, waiting for price drops on large capacity. I have a 32G flashdrive I keep this hobby backed up on, no problems ever, and still have 18 gigs free. I like SS memory, and I do worry about mechanical breakdown.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    The thing is you don't need a huge SSD. Get whatever you think is reasonable to afford. Put your OS on there. And your most used files. BOOM, turbo speed boost. If you have terabytes of other data then keep that on the old spinning disks.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2016-12-02 00:10
    Heater. wrote: »
    The thing is you don't need a huge SSD. Get whatever you think is reasonable to afford. Put your OS on there. And your most used files. BOOM, turbo speed boost. If you have terabytes of other data then keep that on the old spinning disks.



    I'm not worried about loosing any information on the drive the OS resides on, and I have only requested a copy of an OS from MS once. I just wonder how much of a hassle it is?



    EDIT: I should have licenses for at least five or six machines with a different MSOS.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-12-01 23:22
    Ah, OK. I have no idea.

    My SSD upgrades have been purely Linux things.

    Only recently have I been toying with the Windows world. Having ignored it since 1997.






  • Just gave my nephew my Thuban X6 1045 that would easily O/C to 3.6Ghz. Had a 3-4 year old Samsun 830 128GB SSD and it flies.

    Just check Anandtech SSD section, or the forums to find a decent low-cost SSD.

    I think you can get 128GB for $70 now, and we're talking top of the line Samsung not Adata or some other 2/3rd tier. Just check that you're buying an SSD appropriate for your motherboard. If you don't have Sata 6Gb, then you don't need the fastest. At this point though, anything you buy if going to be close to saturating a Sata 6Gb anyways so....

    Install Windows on that, then use Macrium Reflect Free to image it too a back-up device if you want.

    There really is no way to explain how fast your system will feel. Even on the older X6 with an older Samsung 830, by the time I'd pressed the Word icon, the app was usually open within a second. Smaller apps open before your finger is off the mouse key.

    Really, at the rock bottom prices nowadays for Tier1 SSD's, just having a 128GB model for OS for $70 is the single best upgrade you can get to prolong system usefulness, outside of GPU for gaming.





  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    Heater. wrote: »
    Keep hold of your 2009 quad core whatever. Nothing has got much faster since then.
    Very true, I worked on some very CPU-intensive software a couple of years ago, lots of bit handling and whatnot, and I had to get it to run as fast as possible in order to handle the real time requirements. My 2009 desktop PC turned out to be as fast as, if not faster than, the fastest latest most expensive servers we had, several years newer than my old Fujitsu.
    It's still fast, it's just that it doesn't have enough memory for browsers, thunderbird, crashplan (Java) etc. It runs Linux, but applications is another type of bloat. I want to increase RAM by an order of magnitude. Unfortunately 16GB is the limit is this one, and that's where the difference with newer machines is - some of the newer ones can take hundreds of gigs.
    Just get it an SSD. That simple and cheap upgrade dramatically speeds up boot time and general usage. The most amazing upgrade I ever made to any machines.
    I'm sure that would help a bit. My NEC notebook (running Linux too) boots in five seconds, and everything I do is instant, e.g. starting a browser. But it has its limits too, due to RAM.
    But my desktop PC will have to wait for those large SSDs to come down in price. It's not my OS disk that's trashing.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Good grief what do you do on your PC's?

    I have never had a machine with more than 8GBytes of RAM. Almost never feel the need for more. Even this chrome browser with a dozen tabs open is only using a gig of this 8 gig machine.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2016-12-02 13:09
    A dozen?.. I should mention that I also regularly run into the limit of 255 X clients. I have 30 virtual desktops. I move from project to project to project to work package (20-30) over days, weeks, months.. and coming back to it. Next day, or in five months. The only way I can do that is to instantly be able to move to a virtual desktop where I have all the information (in browsers, editors, terminal windows etc. etc.). In other words, I store the context, and to do a mental context switch I literally switch context on the computer. That's what computers are for, or at least one important function that can't easily be done in any other way.

    So, if I really have to shut down the computer, I shut it down directly, 'sync; halt', no shutting down browsers first. When I restart, the browser will restore everything. No time lost (hours, days) to find back to all the context.

    And then it's what I actually do, in those contexts.. a lot of it is about processing satellite data. One dataset can easily be 20 gigabytes.
  • koehler wrote: »
    Just check Anandtech SSD section, or the forums to find a decent low-cost SSD.

    I think you can get 128GB for $70 now, and we're talking top of the line Samsung not Adata or some other 2/3rd tier. Just check that you're buying an SSD appropriate for your motherboard. If you don't have Sata 6Gb, then you don't need the fastest. At this point though, anything you buy if going to be close to saturating a Sata 6Gb anyways so....

    Install Windows on that, then use Macrium Reflect Free to image it too a back-up device if you want.

    Really, at the rock bottom prices nowadays for Tier1 SSD's, just having a 128GB model for OS for $70 is the single best upgrade you can get to prolong system usefulness, outside of GPU for gaming.






    Thank you for the information.

    This machine sounds like it could really benefit from an upgrade like that. If I'm not sitting down for a long session with it, I just have to start it up for scanning or printing somthing, and wait...and wait.

    It just seems like a long wait when your in a hurry. And I dont want to wait until I have trouble. Had hard drives go out before, and don't like it. 12G sounds like plenty of room, I don't have a lot of apps.

    Maybe my TV DVR card will start up on the first try, and I don't have to wait on indexing.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2016-12-02 13:38
    I've bought some SSD to ATA (2.5") adapters for my old IDE-based laptops. Some M.2, some mSATA. So depending on what I may come across (affordable M.2 or mSATA), I'll be ready to replace the HDs with SSD and make those old ones a bit more snappy. *And* make them bump-/movement-proof. I've never had a harddisk failure in any of my laptops, ever, but I never move it if the disk is running. I know lots of people who have had up to several disk crashes on laptops, and those people are always without execption the same guys who like to carry the running laptop around to show others this and that.
  • Tor wrote: »
    I've never had a harddisk failure in any of my laptops, ever, but I never move it if the disk is running. I know lots of people who have had up to several disk crashes on laptops, and those people are always without execption the same guys who like to carry the running laptop around to show others this and that.



    I haven't had a HD failure in a laptop either. I did have to replace the drive in my PS3.

    I have a supercomputer of laptops that I want to get back in operation. I opened the wrong email faster than antivirus could catch it, a few years back. It was the UPS virus, and it's something I can fix myself, given the proper tools. I poked around in DOS before looking for associated files back when it happened. But I couldn't find anything. Maybe there is better documentation now, but it won't stay in Windows or safe mode very long before getting a blue screen. It's a fast computer with NVidia GPU, and I miss it even though it isn't what you call portable.
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  • @Heater, look at these spec's for a modern gaming laptop.
    The current line, the X70 series, was released in 2013, featuring an Intel Core i7 processor with up to 32 gigabytes of DDR3 SDRAM and an nVidia Geforce GTX 770M as well as a 17.3 inch Full HD display.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    @Tor,

    Good grief. Your mind must be a busy place. Like Heathrow airport on a Monday morning!

    I can hardly work on one thing at a time. And when I do I need all other distractions hidden away.

    The modern world demands I'm constantly pestered by email, slack, skype, webex, etc. Never mind the mobile phone. It's driving me nuts.

    But, yeah, I can see that if you can juggle that many plates at the same time the machine has to be able to keep up.

    And, yeah, there are huge data sets to handle. Not in my world though.

    @MikeDYur,

    I'm sure gamers need all the power and memory they can get. I have no idea really, I have not been into computer games since Star Glider on my Atari ST rated me as a "cheat" when I hit a score of over 100,000 back in 1980 something.

  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2016-12-03 12:43
    This is how supercomputing is done these days. You would think at -450 degrees Fahrenheit that nothing would move, not even an electron.



    https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/areas-of-ames-ingenuity-supercomputing/

    The D-Wave Vesuvius processor, which provides the computing power of the quantum computer, is cryogenically cooled to 20 millikelvin or about -460 degrees fahrenheit, two orders of magnitude colder than outer space.

    Credits: NASA


    See also:

    https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/


    For real time updates of how Pleiades 243,644 processor's are utilized.
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  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-12-03 13:50
    Your electron will still be moving at absolute zero.

    In order for the electron to not be moving it would have to have zero energy. Classically the electron's energy could have any value from zero upwards. So we would like to say that at zero temperature it has zero energy and hence zero velocity. It is not moving.

    However quantum mechanics dictates that the electron's energy cannot have any value on a continuum, rather it adopts certain discrete energy levels. The lowest of these allowed energy levels is not zero. That is to say that at zero temperature the electron still has energy and can be said to still be moving. This is known as the "zero-point energy" or "ground-state energy".

    But what about the atom the electron is sitting in? Same applies there. That atom will still have energy at absolute zero. An extreme case is Helium that does not even freeze at any temperature. It remains a liquid and can still move!

    Nice article about all this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

    That D-Wave thing seems to be a bit of a mystery. Every time I read about quantum computing they say that they are far from building a useful quantum computer. Also quantum computers only suite a limited class of problems.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2016-12-04 15:47
    Thanks Heater, its amazing what is known and what is still to be learned. How we got to the moon with such computing is interesting.

    We are looking at winter strait in the face here, and I swear there is sometimes I don't have any electrons moving.



    Anybody know what the colored rectangles are?

    Top Secret maybe, I haven't seen this before. But how often do you get to look under the hood.
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  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-12-05 12:51
    What I find amazing is that the huge piles of complex and unfathomamble mathematics we have in physics, quamtum mechanics, relativity, etc, etc... comes from some quite simple thoughts.

    Our electron for example. If we could somehow reach into the atom, grab hold of the electron, and stop it moving we would have an electron with zero energy. It would be "frozen".

    Well except, if we let go of it what would happen? The electron has a negative charge, the atomic nucleus has a positive charge, so our electron would be attracted to the nucleus and fall into it. Our atom would collapse into nothing!

    We conclude that we cannot stop the electron. Atoms don't just collapse so that electron must still have energy at zero temperature.

    BUT, we know we know that if a charge, like that on the electron, is twirling around it generates electromagnetic waves. Those waves carry energy away from the electron. An electron orbiting the atom would again spiral down and down and the atom would collapse.

    This does not happen. Therefore we conclude there must be a minimum "quanta" of energy below which the electron cannot go.

    That idea of the "quanta" changes everything about how we can calculate what is going on. Boom! Quantum mechanics.

    Having said all that, I agree, in the dead quite and dark of winter, when it is minus 40C in the forest one becomes convinced that not even the electrons can be moving!

    I have no idea about that D-Wave chip. My understanding of quantum mechanics ended in 1979 after three years study. I have forgotten most of that by now and for sure a lot more has been discovered since.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2016-12-05 13:08
    Good explanation, Heater.
    The funny thing is that there is more than one way to arrive at the same conclusion; that electrons can't have zero energy. One is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: The more you know about the position of the electron, the less you know about its momentum, and the other way around (and, quoting WP, "the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology." But if the electron had zero energy, i.e. become 'frozen', you would know both of those factors precisely. And you can't. So it can't.

    The uncertainty principle is also behind non-empty space. It won't let you have non-empty space with no energy. It forces nature to constantly create 'virtual' particles, constantly popping in and out of existence. Which again creates other interesting effects, like the Casimir effect .
    Heater. wrote: »
    Having said all that, I agree, in the dead quite and dark of winter, when it is minus 40C in the forest one becomes convinced that not even the electrons can be moving!
    Good choise of temperature there, -40 is the only point where Fahrenheit (sp?) and Celsius agree..
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    Heater. wrote: »
    @Tor,

    Good grief. Your mind must be a busy place. Like Heathrow airport on a Monday morning!

    I can hardly work on one thing at a time. And when I do I need all other distractions hidden away.
    No, it's the other way around. I'm not explaining this very well. The point is that I *can't* work at many things at the same time. So I don't. But my work demands that I'm able to switch from one to another (and a third, fourth.. 15th) at some point. Say I'm working on implementing an algorithm or something. Then, having done that, I move to something else. 7 months later I'll have to do some more work on that. At that point (actually, nearly 7 months before..) my 'mental' cache cleared out all about that stuff. So what can I do to re-load the mental cache? I switch to that virtual desktop where I have all the stuff that I had previously spent time searching up and writing notes about. So it's all there. Same with everything else I work on. Otherwise I would spend all the time getting up to speed on whatever I was about to do. In the old times I would maybe carefully fill a binder with information, and store it for later. (In fact I have many binders in my office, from the old times..). Now I let the computer do it. That's what they are for. But I don't use the computer as a binder, i.e. I don't do the same work I would do with a binder and selecting, extracting, printing, etc. Using a computer instead of paper is just a waste. Use it as a computer, instead. I have the original work already there, on screen, in a virtual desktop. I simply make sure that this does not disappear. Browsers will re-load old context these days, so I can also shut down my computer (even though my office desktop PC can have uptimes in years, in practice). Same with many other tools.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-12-05 14:41
    Tor,

    Certainly one can say that electrons can't have zero energy because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You could even state what the principle is.

    I'm not sure that is the same as what I said though. That is just stating a rule without attempting to explain or justify why the rule is in place. Somebody who knows nothing of QM would not be any the wiser.

    A curious enquirer would then have to ask you why on Earth such a non-intuitive rule is in place. Where did it come from?

    That then requires introducing the wave like nature of particles. A wave is distributed in space rather than being a point like thing at any knowable position.

    That then requires discussing why we might suspect such a wave like model.

    This all leads to a lot of very non-intuitive and mysterious conclusions that seem counter to everyday experience and cause people to have a very hard time accepting. Or at least gives rise to a lot of debate about how or why it should be.

    Ultimately, at the bottom of the rabbit hole, there is no reason given. The maths all fits together and it matches up with experimental results.

    That is not so bad. Same can be said for Newtonian mechanics. Why should F = m * a ? Why should we think of a gravitational force, F = G * M * m / r * r ?

    Newton would just say "I offer no explanation". It's a mystery, it fits observation, live with it.

    Sometimes I think it would be better not to teach Newtonian mechanics to kids at school. Just get them doing experiments with waves and into QM as soon as possible.

    Ha, my choice of minus 40C was purely coincidental. It's just a situation I have been in a couple of times.


  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2016-12-05 23:04
    Why does China have the top two fastest supercomputer's in the world?

    The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computersystems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500


    The SW26010 is a 260-core manycore processor designed by the National High Performance Integrated Circuit Design Centerin Shanghai.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010

    The LINPACK Benchmarks are a measure of a system's floating point computing power. Introduced by Jack Dongarra, they measure how fast a computer solves a dense n by n system of linear equations Ax = b, which is a common task in engineering.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINPACK_benchmarks


    I couldn't find it but I bet the USA has better warrantees.

    EDIT: Interesting note, the top machines all run Linux.

    Reading on maybe we just don't brag.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-12-05 23:16
    It's all dick waving. National pride. Blah, blah. Like putting man on the moon. Great and all but goes no where.

    When it gets down to serious business, like calculating a huge lot of digits of PI these wimpy super computers don't even dare to turn up for fear of embarrassment.

    The current record of 22,459,157,718,361 digits is held by a machine built from off the shelf PC parts:

    4 x Xeon E7-8890 v3 @ 2.50 GHz (72 cores, 144 threads)

    1.25 TB DDR4 RAM

    20 x 6 TB Disk

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_computation_of_π

    :)





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