The Silicon Graphics Servers That Use 1024 Processors
Silicon Graphics have an enviable reputation as an R&D powerhouse, creating flexible graphics workstations that provided the effects for many blockbuster films. Less well known are the high end servers and supercomputers that Silicon Graphics develop.
When Silicon Graphics bought legendary supercomputer company Cray in the mid 1990s, they leveraged some of Cray’s knowledge, and developed their own line of powerful super machines. The Origin 2000 was the first of these. Powered by MIPS CPUs, the Origin 2000 could scale from 8 CPUs up to 1024. Adding special graphics cabinets created the Onyx, a graphics supercomputer of extreme power.
Then SGI created the Origin 3000, growing on the previous design. The Origin 3000 used modular ‘bricks’ - containing processors, IO cards, or even graphics cards - to enable very customised configurations. Again, ranging from 8 CPUs to 1024 - with rumours of custom 2048 CPU machines being built for government agencies.
These servers were Single System Image (SSI) servers. Despite the large number of processors in them, they ran one copy of the IRIX operating system, and behaved to the end user exactly the same way as a normal compuyter would.
Silicon Graphics are carrying on their development with the current line of Altix scaleable supercomputers, using Intel’s Itanium processor and running Linux. With multi-core Itaniums available rumours abound of monster 4096 core SSI systems tucked away in government labs.
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