The glory days are over for Cheyenne.
    • golli ( golli@lemm.ee ) 
      4·
      2 years ago

      Ian Cutress recently did a video on the topic here (I think he changed the title to reflect the end price of the auction), which does a bit of a breakdown. You for example also have to add shipping costs (from a certified company) to the price.

      Pretty crazy to think that it is actually not sure whether spending less than 500k on a supercomputer is worth it. Goes to show how far technology has come.

      I guess if everything sells you might make profit, but then it also comes with a lot of hassle and risk. And for actually using it, I imagine that electricity cost would be a huge factor.

      • anachronist ( anachronist@midwest.social ) English
        2·
        2 years ago

        Pretty crazy to think that it is actually not sure whether spending less than 500k on a supercomputer is worth it.

        Has more to do with the market for supercomputers. They are monsters to keep fed so it’s not a question of if you can buy it but rather if you can run it. But customers for supercomputers are in the market because they need the most raw power that the technology is capable of supplying, so buying and installing a decade old supercomputer (which is going to have the same operating costs at a lower capability than a new one) doesn’t make sense.

        You also have to consider that the downtime’s going to be a lot higher on this equipment as you’re going to start having components hit the end of their useful life.

        • golli ( golli@lemm.ee ) 
          1·
          2 years ago

          I mean there definitely are some valuable metals in there, but I can’t imagine that this is a competitive price to pay for them, especially since extraction wouldn’t be easy. And some parts do have value, even if it ends up being the case that running the full cluster isn’t economic anymore.

          I do wonder who at this point could use all those processors (and Mainboards), but the ram might still be reasonable to use, maybe the cables, the cabinets themselves too. And I think the video also mentions that there are two managing servers. Those might be most likely to actually be useful for their original purpose.

  • delirious_owl ( delirious_owl@discuss.online ) 
    16·
    2 years ago

    313TB RAM?!?

    The array’s services were used by scientists across the state of Wyoming and the rest of the country when needed. The 5.34 petaflops system was mainly used for weather and climate studies, helping the National Science Foundation better study climate change and other Earth-related sciences.

    Yeah that makes sense

  • some pirate ( Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
    7·
    2 years ago

    Mr beast: I bought one of the world’s fastest computer and we are going to run the biggest Minecraft server in the world for a competition with 1 million players! the winner will get 10000 dollars and also I’m donating 10000 diapers to Angola

    • Jimmycrackcrack ( Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml ) 
      1·
      2 years ago

      Does the hardware being all so arranged as it is in this manner to create a supercomputer make any difference to that evaluation? Like does the work of putting all the outdated hardware together in the complex way needed to make it functional for supercomputing make it potentially cheaper than buying more modern hardware but having to build it all yourself?

      • Urist ( urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
        2·
        2 years ago

        Some of those nodes are broken, it’s got coolant leaks and the processors are 8 years old. I read in another article they meant to replace it a couple years ago but couldn’t due to COVID supply chain problems (makes sense tbh).

        What I’m saying is, it might be “assembled” already but due to the power draw, you definitely don’t want to run something this out of date. It’s huge. Might be a logistical problem to even get enough juice for this thing. Another poster pointed out it might need its own electrical substation. IMHO it’s only worth parting out. Far too expensive to run.

        Those cabinets look nice though, with the Cheyanne graphic on the front.

        • Jimmycrackcrack ( Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml ) 
          1·
          2 years ago

          Didn’t know they’d taken out the storage drives but I was aware despite my general ignorance that it’s not turnkey ready to go. I guess what I’m wondering is, is there any part of the of the process involved in designing and building such a supercomputing cluster that is already taken care by buying it in the manner that it has been sold and could that in any way offset the increased costs of trying to bring such a cluster online rather than starting from scratch? I’m not saying it is the case, so much as wondering aloud for anyone with expertise to chime in, to see if that’s a way it could make sense.

          I understand there’s a mountain to climb to bring this thing in to a usable state for anyone, but could it maybe get you to base camp more quickly?

          • Moonrise2473 ( Moonrise2473@feddit.it ) 
            1·
            2 years ago

            I’m guessing that due to the nature of this server (scientific calculations by scientists and students who sent jobs remotely, if I understood right) everything was done on RAM and then stored on SAN (separate servers) afterwards

            Otherwise taking out all the storage from each single blade AND putting it back nicely in the racks would have been a massive job, if they did that I would expect to have it half dismantled on the pictured

      • Moonrise2473 ( Moonrise2473@feddit.it ) 
        1·
        2 years ago

        Yes and no. You can sell easily 2-3 units at the current price, but 8000 pieces…

        Technology is improving fast, the E5-2697 v4 has a similar benchmark to a Ryzen 5600, which uses half the power, and making a computer with desktop components is cheaper (except for used registered ECC RAM which is being dumped for cheap)

        And that Ryzen is the old generation, the newer are even faster