The network uses fiber optic transmission to send information to 11 primary data centers in Europe, North America and Asia. From these centers, the data is passed to 140 secondary centers globally.

The processing architecture not only distributes the heavy processing load to computers across the world, but it allows 7,000 scientists to share access to LHC data, to sift through the mountains of information for a nugget of valuable data. And when it comes to understanding the fundamental nature of our Universe, we'll take all the eyes we can get. [China View]

The "cool stuff" will take about three weeks to get up and running, with the more visual demos coming at the tail-end of that. The one benchmark they currently have is that it hits 768 Gigaflops, which they hope to bump over 800 with some fine-tuning. Moving from Nvidia's Quadro 4600 to their newer Tesla cards should give the system a jolt as well, since they're explicitly designed for parallel computing applications, like what the CX1 is designed for.

The CX1 can hold up to eight computing blades—though the storage and visual blade each take up two slots, so the model they were showing had four computing blades, and one of each. While each blade is highly customizable, the cheapest one they had configured was about $4,000, and a fully spec'd out CX1 goes for about $85,000 (slightly higher than they originally announced). While it's not actually designed for gaming at all, for that much I'd want it to burn Crysis directly into my brain. [Cray]

You almost missed it there right next to the desk, didn't you? When it's not badly Photoshopped in a Cray brochure, the CX1 packs 16 Intel Xeon procs, either dual- or quad-core (you choose), with 8 supercomputing nodes that can accommodate 64GB of memory per node. Internal storage tops out at 4TB. You can custom-configure and purchase one today, on ranges from $25,000 to $6000.

Microsoft and Cray Team Up to Drive High Productivity Computing Into the Mainstream
Cray CX1 Supercomputer With Windows HPC Server 2008 and Intel Xeon Processors Starts at $25,000 and Provides "Ease-of-Everything" for New Users of HPC
SEATTLE, WA and REDMOND, WA, Sep 16, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) — Supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) today introduced the new Cray CX1 supercomputer pre-installed with Windows HPC Server 2008. With U.S. list prices starting at $25,000 to over $60,000, "ease-of-everything" features and the ability to fit into standard office environments and workflows, the new product reflects Microsoft and Cray's shared goal to drive high productivity computing farther into the mainstream in a broad array of markets including financial services, aerospace, automotive, petroleum, life sciences, government, academic and digital media.

Studies released by the Council on Competitiveness and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) found that nearly all large firms using HPC consider it indispensable for their ability to compete and survive, but smaller companies, as well as workgroups and departments in larger firms, have been hampered by the cost of HPC systems and a lack of access to in-house experts to help them use these systems.

The Cray CX1 supercomputer was designed from the ground up to address these barriers. It is the most affordable supercomputer ever offered by Cray and is designed to be easy to purchase, deploy, operate and upgrade. Purpose-built for offices, laboratories and university departments, the Cray CX1 is the world's highest-performing computer that uses standard office power.

The Cray CX1 product incorporates up to 8 nodes and 16 Intel Xeon processors, either dual or quad core; delivers up to 64 gigabytes of memory per node; and provides up to 4 terabytes of internal storage. Systems can be configured with a mix of compute, storage and visualization blades to meet customers' individual requirements. The quiet, deskside supercomputer features Windows HPC Server 2008 and interoperates with Linux. A three-year warranty with next-day, on-site Cray-certified support is standard.

"Windows HPC Server 2008, in combination with the Cray CX1 supercomputer, will provide outstanding sustained performance on applications," said Vince Mendillo, director, HPC at Microsoft Corp. "This combined solution will enable companies in various sectors to unify their Windows desktop and server workflows. Many Microsoft financial services customers, for example, want to unify back-office modeling and simulation with the work of front-office trading desks."

"IDC research shows that HPC has been one of the highest-growth IT markets during the past five years and the segment for HPC systems priced below $100,000 is headed for continued growth," said Earl Joseph, IDC's HPC program vice president. "The Cray HPC brand name and experience, combined with Microsoft's strategy of extending the familiar Windows environment upward to the server level, gives the Cray CX1 solution strong potential for exploiting the anticipated growth of this market segment."

"Cray sees Microsoft Windows becoming an increasingly important force in the HPC market," said Ian Miller, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Cray. "With the Cray CX1 high productivity system and Windows HPC Server 2008, we're bringing the power of Cray supercomputing to a much wider range of new users with an affordable and adaptable system that provides incredible value and is easy to install, program and use with a broad array of applications from independent software vendors (ISVs)."

The Cray CX1 high productivity system is also the first Cray product to incorporate Intel processors and the first milestone of the unique collaboration Cray and Intel announced in April to develop a range of HPC systems and technologies over the next several years to address various segments of the HPC industry.

"Taking advantage of the energy-efficient performance of the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series, Cray's CX1 system will bring many HPC capabilities to the office that were previously confined to the datacenter, enabling more users to employ supercomputing to help them solve some of their most difficult computational problems," said Richard Dracott, Intel's General Manager of High Performance Computing, "In addition, we continue to collaborate with Cray on developing the supercomputing technologies of the future, aimed at all segments of the HPC market."

Scientists at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA plan to use a Cray CX1 with Microsoft HPC Server 2008 for mathematical modeling and visualization. This will support their development of advanced computational algorithms and scientific approaches for the comprehensive and quantitative mapping of brain structure and function.

"We are very excited about utilizing the Cray CX1 to support our research activities," said Rico Magsipoc, Chief Technology Officer for the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. "The work that we do in brain research is computationally intensive but will ultimately have a huge impact on our understanding of the relationship between brain structure and function, in both health and disease. Having the power of a Cray supercomputer that is simple and compact is very attractive and necessary, considering the physical constraints we face in our data centers today."

[Cray]

Designed from video game components, and costing $133 million, Roadrunner contains 12,960 chips redesigned from an I.B.M. Cell microprocessor that was originally created for Sony’s PlayStation 3 video-game machine. Add to that a bunch of Opteron processors from Advance Micro Devices, which are commonly found in corporate servers, and there's your supercomputer.

It runs on around three megawatts of power—around the amount that a shopping mall needs if it is to function properly—and needs three separate programming tools to run the trio of different processors. The complicated bit for programmers is to keep all 116,640 processor cores occupied simultaneously, or else the supercomputer does not run effectively. [New York Times]

This kind of setup works really well for tomography because the number-crunching can be done in parallel and is highly vectorized—the same kind of stuff the medical community and Air Force were eye-balling the PS3 for, since the Cell uses a similar kind of architecture.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be so great for more general computing stuffs that can't be crunched in parallel (multiple processors working at once). Either way, watch the video, gigaflops to terabytes, it's the nerdiest thing you'll see this week. [FASTRA, Thanks Toji]

So it can be easily transported to Area 51 to help with extraterrestrial communication efforts. OK, we lied about that, but we do love a good conspiracy theory. Did you hear the one about the Freemasons wanting Steve Jobs to design an exclusive iPod with subtle Freemason markings? Apparently, the FCC label on your iPod is an acronym for "Freemasons Capturing Consumers." Shocking. Be less gullible. [Akihabara]

[TMC Net via The Raw Feed]

To be located in Chicago, the computer would reportedly cost not only $200 million to build, but over $400 million to maintain over its five-year lifetime. It'll be used for only a small number of "Grand Challenge" science projects, such as simulating global warming and playing Crysis at 60fps. Your quad-core XPS tower just got a lot less impressive. [Boston via The Raw Feed]