Colossus, Cray and Blue Gene: The History of Supercomputers

PC Plus ^ | June 19, 2009 | Staff

[texas booster]

The every popular Cray-1

I believe that a similar AN/FSQ-7 unit was at Griffiss AFB in Rome, NY in the 50's - my father got his start as an electronic tech replacing vacuum tubes here. He described it as "one floor of computers, one floor of air conditioning. Repeat."

ASCI White, circa 2001

NEC EarthSimulator in Japan

Just a correction: Roadrunner is not a BlueGene and it is installed at LANL not LLNL. The BGL at LLNL is far from the fastest computer in the world now. NNSA is part of DOE not DOD, as the US nuclear weapons program is under civilian control, as it has been for many decades.

[JoeProBono]

[jakerobins]

What about Hal??

[texas booster]

It's been a while since we have has a Folding@home thread, and figured that a discussion of supercomputers is a good place to restart.

Here is a primer on Folding@home, and how the combined 350,000 computers work to make Folding@home the largest supercomputer, albeit a distributed system.

Folding@Home FAQ for new users:

What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.

Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don't, into their predestined shapes - and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer's and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.

How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.

Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.

How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?:
1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired user-name.
2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic!
3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

How can my computer help? Even if they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford still wouldn't have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people's desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.

There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.

*******************************************

List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!

Another Folding Clip

The Inner Life of a Cell

Folding@home Client Download

FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats

Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic

Another Stats Page

Folding@home New Forum

*******************************************
Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12
Hey DUmmies, can't ya'll post a new thread at least once a year?

**************************************************
Other Useful Stuff - Links

How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed

Point Summary for Workunits

Stat Image Generator

Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software

**************************************
Past FreeRepublic Folding threads

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 #29 #30 #31 #32 #33 #34 #35 #36 #37 #38 #39 #40 #41 #42 #43 #44 #45 #46 #47 #48 #49 #50

[texas booster]

The latest statistics for Folding@home:

Client statistics by OS

OS Type	Native TFLOPS*	x86 TFLOPS*	Active CPUs	Total CPUs
Windows	240	240	252634	2722065
Mac OS X/PowerPC	4	4	5380	128214
Mac OS X/Intel	21	21	6664	90668
Linux	51	51	30167	394856
ATI GPU	1014	1070	9938	67592
NVIDIA GPU	1864	3933	15662	117858
PLAYSTATION®3	951	2007	33732	806716
Total	4145	7326	354177	4327969

Total number of non-Anonymous donators = 1254911

Last updated at Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:57:42

DB date 2009-06-27 05:00:01

Active CPUS are defined as those which have returned WUs within 50 days. Active GPUs are defined as those which have returned WUs within 10 days (due to the shorter deadlines on GPU WUs). Active PS3's are defined as those which have returned WUs within 15 days.

*TFLOPS is the actual teraflops from the software cores, not the peak values from CPU/GPU/PS3 specs. Please see our main FAQ, FLOPS FAQ, PS3 FAQ, NVIDIA GPU FAQ, or ATI GPU FAQ for more details on specific platforms.

 

[texas booster]

I used to torture my kids by making them watch it with me once a year, until the mere threat could keep them in line.

That movie, plus the Neptune at Night series on PBS in the 80's, were among my favorites.

[frankenMonkey]

I’ve worked on seven from Top500 supercomputers back in the day...

[frankenMonkey]

or...
“I’ve worked on seven Top500 supercomputers back in the day...”
in English

[texas booster]

Sad isn't it?

We have more capability in an iPhone than in some of those older systems, at least in terms of FLOPS, certainly in terms of usability.

[texas booster]

For the many who have labored for many years to crunch proteins, THANK YOU!

If you have recently upgraded a system, please consider reinstalling one of the new F@H consoles (much improved), a F@H tray client (makes it easy to start/stop F@H), one of the Mac/Linux/GPU/SMP folding clients, or run it on your PS3!

Thanks for all of your help to keep us high in the charts.

[Glenn]

[sionnsar]

Geezer Geek ping.

This is a very low-volume ping list (typically days to weeks between pings).
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this list.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

The Naval Ordnance Relay Calculator, designed by Howard Aiken and installed at the Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground to facilitate ballistic computation, was really the world's first supercomputer.

[Professional Engineer]

I’m afraid he’s detected a fault in the AE35 unit.

[Drango]

BUMP

[Oatka]

We have more capability in an iPhone than in some of those older systems,

I cut my teeth as a programmer in the late '60s, and loved the work as there was always something new to learn, almost on a monthly basis. When we talked about the Cray and its power, it was almost in whispers. Major Ju-Ju. When the home computers came on the scene I was pretty blase about their improvements until I read where the average desktop of the day, and this was some years ago, had more power than the Cray. That really blew my mind and made me aware of how far we had come.

And I think there was a similar article that said something like the old 286-12 computers had more power than the computers on the Apollo missions. If so, I really have to tip my hat to those programmers.

[AFreeBird]

And I think there was a similar article that said something like the old 286-12 computers had more power than the computers on the Apollo missions.

Oh hell, your digital watch has more processing power than those old Apollo IBM computers.

[HangThemHigh]

I recently added a quad core AMD machine running Vista 64 bit. I was hoping to run the GPU core, but that didn’t work out, I was only getting a few hundred points a day, so I switched to the SMP core.

After some initial problems, it has been clicking along for a few months, but every time I try to install it as a service, the folding gets lost before long and just stops or refuses to upload results, etc, etc. So for now, I’m just running the console version in a window.

I read all I could find on this, but there is so much out of date info around, it is hard to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Do you (or anyone here) happen to know if the SMP core can successfully run as a service under Vista 64 bit? If it can, I could use a few hints on how to do it. Just answering the questions in the setup program doesn’t seem to work, there must be other steps required.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Ah - But the equations going through the supercomputers still need to be correct: and THAT is where the all the power and speed in the world running false AGW assumptions based on simplified equations with bad constants and false “values” will yield.........

(Nothing)

Or worse, they will yield the false answers WANTED by those who follow their Gaia-inspired AGW religion.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks tb.