I found an IBM z900 on ebay for $2,500. I have space for it and would love to have a unit like this crunching for R@H but I don't know enough about it.

Does anyone here know if R@H will run in the Linux partitions on this box? Do I need to stay with idea of .5GB of RAM per WU? Does the zOS require a license fee?

I love the idea of a z900 running in my basement / garage and would like to move forward with a project like this but my lack of knowledge is a big issue. If you are a z900 master or have some experience with them, please shoot me a note.

thx

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Thx!

Paul

I can't answer your questions, but I have to say that if you can pull it off, kudos. Very cool way to help Rosetta@home :)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_z

I don't think they have a compatible CPU architecture for R@H.

You can tho get a blazing fast PC that will run R@H for a cheaper price.
Using this as it's core:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211

You could probably build two identical PCs for the same price as the IBM. So that's two i7s w/ HT, you'll have 16 cores (8 real) each running at 3.0GHz, with proper OC knowledge you can pull 4.0GHz+ EACH CORE. The i7 claims to push 6 TFlops, so you'll have 12 TFlops with both PCs.

According to wikipedia, the IBM can pull off 18TFlops (If I read the numbers right). But just imagine the amount of electricity it'll use... And even if if that were ok for you, the CPU it uses doesn't seem to be compatible :( (I mean, R@H doesn't even support PowerPCs anymore).

Just my two cents.

Edit: Look at this dual mobo. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131373

It's the same socket type, so it should support i7s even tho the spec pages doesn't mention them.

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Double Post

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It sounds like there are some better options. It would be cool to have a z900 in the garage but I think I will buy some GPUs.

thx

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Thx!

Paul

omfg!

if you want to literally have a supercomputer in your house,

click here to read about it and watch the youtube video

and

click here for how to build it.

i am.

except i purchased the asus p6t6 (6 pcie slots) not the p6t7 (7 pcie slots)...

omfg!

if you want to literally have a supercomputer in your house,

click here to read about it and watch the youtube video

and

click here for how to build it.

i am.

except i purchased the asus p6t6 (6 pcie slots) not the p6t7 (7 pcie slots)...

Jesus. Christ.

Rosetta has to tap into this.

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Folding@Home could...

Folding@Home could...

I know, but I prefer R@H. I wonder if with the new nVidia FERMI stuff it'd be easier to program R@H to work with the GPUs. I mean FASTRA II has 10% of the WHOLE R@H project. The amount of available PC horse power is ridiculous.

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Short answer (has always been) F@H lends itself to PS3/GPU, and Rosie just doesn't.

It's just the nature of the beast.

But yeah, something like FASTRA 2 (i.e., 7 pcie slots) with nVidia's "to be released" FERMI :(, would be "interesting" to say the least

Short answer (has always been) F@H lends itself to PS3/GPU, and Rosie just doesn't.

It's just the nature of the beast.

But yeah, something like FASTRA 2 (i.e., 7 pcie slots) with nVidia's "to be released" FERMI :(, would be "interesting" to say the least

From what I've seen, any BOINC project that's able to use essentially all of the GPU cores in a GPU in a very limited portion of video memory, such as GPUGRID, should do well with the newer GPUs BOINC currently supports (Nvidia and AMD/ATI). However, those that would instead use only as many GPU cores as there is enough video memory for, with barely any use of the other GPU cores, would not get much of a speedup even with the few GPU cards that are expensive due to their large amounts of video memory, such as the Tesla 10. Someone on the Rosetta staff posted that Rosetta appears to belong to the second type.

Also, there's a question on when the GPUs will have compilers available that can take whatever computer language minirosetta is already written in, and compile it into one of the two types of code BOINC is ready to send to GPUs (only CUDA for Nvidia boards). Nvidia MAY have announced plans to start providing one "soon", but with a few problems in the way the announcement was written:

1. Whoever wrote it does not appear to agree with us on what "soon" means.

2. He/she does not appear to have listened to those who care about whether the new compilers will work for Nvidia's older chips.

3. No statement on whether large sections of the program will have to be manually rewritten directly in CUDA as part of the conversion process.

http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=1406

(Rosetta@home currently seems unable to download the BBcode page needed to reformat this link to make it clickable.)

AMD/ATI is even slower about providing suitable compilers, although they have recently announced one for a computer language none of the Rosetta applications are likely to already be using for their source code.

I found an IBM z900 on ebay for $2,500. I have space for it and would love to have a unit like this crunching for R@H but I don't know enough about it.

Does anyone here know if R@H will run in the Linux partitions on this box? Do I need to stay with idea of .5GB of RAM per WU? Does the zOS require a license fee?

I love the idea of a z900 running in my basement / garage and would like to move forward with a project like this but my lack of knowledge is a big issue. If you are a z900 master or have some experience with them, please shoot me a note.

thx

Something else to consider for such powerful machines: I'd expect many of them to require 3-phase power, something usually not already available in residential neighborhoods. The z900 specs I could find with a web search don't say if it requires 3-phase. Therefore, if you're thinking of buying one, you'd better ask a salesman whether it requires 3-phase power, ask your power company how much it would cost to give you 3-phase power service, or both.

The specs for the z900 do mention that they can be ordered either with or without the extra hardware needed to run Linux, so make sure which you get.

I'd expect you to need to be ready for future R@h workunits that require even more than 0.5 GB RAM each to run at full speed - some already do, and only a small fraction of this is sharable with other R@h workunits running at the same time.

Also, consider the possibility that it may need an air conditioning upgrade for whatever room you put it in, even in winter weather; some of the older large computers I worked with even required two oversize air conditioners for the room at once, one to provide backup for any failures of the other.

SETI is the only project which has applications for zOS.

But, the Linux ran at the zSeries is a special architecture. Linux x86 binaries does not ran on Linux for zSeries. Simliar with the GPU, a special customisation would been required.

The zSeries was build for throughtput not for crunching performance. The Cell CPU boards are thought to shift out crunching tasks to the Cell CPUs.

I think, to invest this money into PCs would get a lot of better BOINC crunchers, and consumes a lot of less power.

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As Rosetta doesn't have a GPU app, you may just want to buy a big CPU farm.
What about a V16 V32 ? etc..
Buy a tyan mobo for example, with 4 quad xeon or opteron. It would be a good computer too. 16 real core.

Or why not building your own supercomputer, with X mobo, X processors, etc...

Can be nice too !

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MyUneo, the Cupid of Services

Amazing what you can find on eBay these days...

IBM supercomputer SP Deepblue 48way 48GB ram. 9076


The IBM 9076 SP2