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student & professor build budget supercomputer


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#1 John_Ventureville

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 06:48 AM


Student and professor build budget supercomputer

http://www.calvin.ed...8/microwulf.htm

August 30 , 2007

When Tim Brom 07’ set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England.

Brom, now a graduate student at the University of Kentucky continuing his studies in computer science, worked with Adams to build Microwulf, a machine that is among the smallest and least expensive supercomputers on the planet.

“It’s small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk,” said Brom.

This may prove useful next summer when Brom and others from his graduate program travel to England to do work that will require “a significant amount of computing power.” And as the price of commercial supercomputers is often prohibitive for many educational institutions, bringing a “personal” supercomputer like Microwulf could be a cost-effective solution for the group of graduate researchers.

“So far as we can tell, this is the first supercomputer to have this low price/performance ratio—the first to cost less than $100/Gflop,” said Adams.

This is a significant achievement considering that Microwulf is more than twice as fast as Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, and cost only a fraction of the $5 million spent to build Deep Blue.

Microwulf has been measured to process 26.25 gigaflops, or 26.25 billion double-precision floating point instructions, per second. It achieves this performance by relying on four dual-core motherboards connected by an 8-port Gigabyt Ethernet switch. The connected components form a three-tiered system that looks like a triple-decker sandwich.

Supercomputers like Microwulf are used to solve problems that take too much number-crunching for an ordinary desktop to handle, either because its processor is too slow, or because it doesn’t have enough memory, said Adams. Truly huge supercomputers (more than 100 times as fast as Microwulf) are used by organizations like the National Weather Service to process meteorological data and by the United States Missile Defense Agency to simulate nuclear tests.

Microwulf is considered a Beowulf cluster, a group of networked computers that run open source software and work in parallel to solve a single problem. Beowulf clusters are so named because their homemade, cost-effective nature liberates researchers from expensive commercial options for super-computing, much like Beowulf of the Old English poem liberated the Danes from the tyrannical rule of Grendel.

Do Brom and Adams see themselves as “liberators” by unveiling of a system like Microwulf?

“We’re taking the liberation a step further,” said Adams. “Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own.”

Just two years ago, building a personal supercomputer like Microwulf for the price of a high-performance desktop was out of the realm of possibility for Adams and Brom. But when they saw a portable Beowulf cluster called Little Fe at a conference in October 2005, they began to think about building their system.

“I was really enjoying my high-performance computing class and wanted to keep working in that area after the class ended. I was also thinking about graduate school at the time and a project like Microwulf looks good on a curriculum vitae,” said Brom.

So by the summer of 2006 when the price of hardware materials needed to build Microwulf had gone down, Adams asked his academic department to provide $2500 for the project. He also asked Brom, then beginning his last year at Calvin, to help him build the supercomputer. In January of 2007, they began to piece together their system and by March, they were running tests to see just what Microwulf could do. In the end, the project came in under budget with Microwulf donning a price-tag of just $2470. With current hardware prices, another system like Microwulf would cost half of what it cost Adams and Brom to build earlier this year.

Though supercomputers are typically evaluated on their price/performance ratio, Adams built Microwulf giving attention to its power/performance ratio as well. In other words, he wanted to pay attention to the system’s energy consumption.

“This is becoming increasingly important, as excess power consumption is inefficient and generates waste heat, which can in turn decrease reliability,” said Adams on his Web site.

Adams and Brom managed to build Microwulf so that it could plug into one standard 120V wall outlet. This feature only enhances the system’s portability, allowing it to be taken to classrooms and other research labs where large power supplies are unavailable.

Adams isn’t going to let Microwulf gather dust in the supercomputing lab in the Science Building. Instead he’s going to take it out on the road, mostly to middle school and high school classrooms to try and get teenagers hooked on computer science.

Microwulf’s inventors aren’t set on keeping their blueprints for the supercomputer a secret. In fact, they’ve just published a detailed description and evaluation of their project on Cluster Monkey so others can build their own portable and affordable supercomputers.

It remains to be seen whether Brom will be able to get his wire-filled personal supercomputer past airport security next summer.

~written by Allison Graff, web communications coordinator

#2 lunarsolarpower

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 07:58 AM

This is a significant achievement considering that Microwulf is more than twice as fast as Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, and cost only a fraction of the $5 million spent to build Deep Blue.


Gordon's law keeps on going...

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#3 Johan

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 10:58 AM

So assuming this costs less than $100/Gflop, the total cost to build that computer would be about $2500. That's cheaper than a lot of desktop computers.

A few of these Microwulfs for the Folding@Home project would be nice. :|w

#4 digfarenough

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 04:12 PM

So assuming this costs less than $100/Gflop, the total cost to build that computer would be about $2500. That's cheaper than a lot of desktop computers.

A few of these Microwulfs for the Folding@Home project would be nice. :|w


Notice the date: it's old news. I worked out the price for one a few months ago and it was around half the original price. By now I bet you could build one for around $1000.

#5 Mind

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 08:45 PM

Hmmm? It might be worthwhile to scrape together some cash an have an Imminst 'intern' put one of these together and run folding at home. If the thing runs at least 25 gflops, that must equate to a lot of points/work units. At a price under $2,000, it is tempting.

#6 Johan

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 10:56 PM

Notice the date: it's old news. I worked out the price for one a few months ago and it was around half the original price. By now I bet you could build one for around $1000.


Thanks for pointing that out. So that's <$40/Gflop today, then. That's pretty good value. I mean, I paid about $1000 in total for the computer I use at the moment, and that's probably nowhere near 26 Gflops (although I imagine that there are certain things that supercomputers have problems with as well).

For that money, I would consider building a Microwulf or two myself, if I knew how to do it.

Edited by Johan, 12 May 2008 - 10:58 PM.


#7 digfarenough

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 11:07 PM

Thanks for pointing that out. So that's <$40/Gflop today, then. That's pretty good value. I mean, I paid about $1000 in total for the computer I use at the moment, and that's probably nowhere near 26 Gflops (although I imagine that there are certain things that supercomputers have problems with as well).

For that money, I would consider building a Microwulf or two myself, if I knew how to do it.


If you built your current computer, you can build a Microwulf: check their website and look at the diagrams and instructions ( http://www.calvin.ed...arch/microwulf/ ). Essentially all it is is four minimially-equipped computers (as I recall, dual core CPUs on a motherboard with RAM and two network cards) running linux and sharing a harddrive. The two main areas of "difficulty" are physically setting up the hardware (they made their own case out of polycarbonate sheets, stacking all the motherboards) and getting the clustering software to work (actually could be easy for all I know, but I've never done it).

#8 Johan

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Posted 12 May 2008 - 11:14 PM

Thanks a lot - I might have a go at it some time in the future, if I have some spare money and time. I'm not an expert on building computers, but as long as I have reasonable instructions (and a few friends who are more knowledgeable in this matter than me), it could be possible.

I expect that, if one used more modern hardware (e.g. using the latest quad-core CPUs), one could get more than 26.25 Gflops out of it. That would cost more money, though, and could raise the cost per Gflop.

Edited by Johan, 12 May 2008 - 11:20 PM.


#9 digfarenough

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 12:39 AM

Thanks a lot - I might have a go at it some time in the future, if I have some spare money and time. I'm not an expert on building computers, but as long as I have reasonable instructions (and a few friends who are more knowledgeable in this matter than me), it could be possible.

I expect that, if one used more modern hardware (e.g. using the latest quad-core CPUs), one could get more than 26.25 Gflops out of it. That would cost more money, though, and could raise the cost per Gflop.


No prob. I think the community for these sort of commodity clusters is pretty good, so I'm sure you could find help for any problems you run into. I, too, hope to build one of these at some point. The main reason I don't is that the simulations I currently run aren't terribly parallelizable, so I figure I'll wait and let the prices continue to drop until I really need it.

A little warning: if you do use quad-core CPUs, you'd want 4 network interfaces per motherboard (and so would need a bigger router) and you should double the amount of RAM per motherboard, so it'd be even more expensive than you might think to do so. (I forget what it's called, but there's a rule of thumb that processing power, RAM, and bandwidth between nodes all should be more or less balanced for maximum efficiency).

#10 Luna

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 08:30 AM

huh.. what am I missing that makes that computer so special?
Most house computers run at 3.2GHz and 4gb DDR2 or DDR3 anyways..

#11 Johan

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 10:12 AM

According to my calculations, the price of a Microwulf today would be about $1,100 (using products from here). Assuming a performance of 26.25 Gflops, that's $41.90/Gflop.

#12 Live Forever

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 03:12 PM

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?

#13 Mind

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 07:02 PM

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?


....even more folding for the Longevity Meme team.

#14 Live Forever

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 07:19 PM

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?


....even more folding for the Longevity Meme team.

Mind, I like the way you think.

#15 Luna

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 07:52 PM

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?


....even more folding for the Longevity Meme team.

Mind, I like the way you think.


That is why he is Mind :)

#16 spaceistheplace

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 07:53 PM

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?


video games??

#17 dnamechanic

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Posted 13 May 2008 - 09:00 PM

Microwulf has been measured to process 26.25 gigaflops

All GFlops are not equal. :)

Besides folding, what other things would you be able to do with a computer like that?


....even more folding for the Longevity Meme team.

I will restrict comments to those applicable to F@H. For example PS3s and Graphics prcessors produce a lot of GFlops. Unfortunately at the moment, Stanford's client statistics site is down. With Stanford's PS3, GPU, and regular computer stats data I could calculate average Gflops for each type of system. But, I recall something like; more than 50 GFlops for each of the PS3 and GPU systems. Unfortunately those GFlops are not very versatile, and PS3s cannot fold all types of work units.

The number 26.25 gigaflops, that's pretty good for eight cores, tho not spectacular.

An Intel Quad core CPU (Q6600) along with related computer hardware makes a pretty efficient folder. The Linux Folding client actually calculates GFlops after completing each work unit. The Windows client doesn't do this, guess Windows must be GFlops challenged. :~

Here are screenshots of GFlop calculations for each pair of cores in a quad core system. This system used a Q6600 running at Q6700 speed (2.66 GHz) running two instances of VMware Linux server software.

The screenshots were taken at the finish of folding two SMP work units, one work unit per pair of cores.

Attached File  GFlops_q1.jpg   56.69KB   0 downloads

Attached File  GFlops_q2.jpg   58.62KB   1 downloads

The total GFlops for the system is the sum of the two numbers:

5.527 + 5.543= 11.07 GFlops

Microwulf’s inventors aren’t set on keeping their blueprints for the supercomputer a secret

It is a stretch to call the described system in the article a supercomputer. Dedicated folders for Stanford's F@H program build systems that fold at that rate.

Considering the article date 'August 30 , 2007', things have change a bit since then. Although in August last year, the Intel Q6600 quad CPU was available at a reasonable price ~$300, and other necessary components were widely available.

There are motherboards that will accept two quad core CPUs. These are primarily marketed to server applications. A 22 GFlop folding system could be built fairly easily using two quad core CPUs. Intel Q6600s can be had for approximately $200 each. A complete folding system could be built for $1,000 or maybe less. Intel Q6600's are pretty overclockable, so another 25% processor speed could be had via overclocking. This could provide a realistic 27.5 GFlops of folding power. Also, newer 45nm quads are available at approximately $300 each (Q9450) that are computationally more efficient and more power efficient.

It achieves this performance by relying on four dual-core motherboards connected by an 8-port Gigabyt Ethernet switch.

Again, not so remarkable.

As digfarenough and others noted:

If you built your current computer, you can build a Microwulf: check their website and look at the diagrams and instructions

It looks pretty much like a version of a Folding Farm.

One can take a Ethernet switch and couple two, or more, 'regular' single quad-core systems together and obtain similar performance, probably for less cost that the previously mentioned dual quad-core arrangement. Even greater performance can be had by using more than two quad core systems coupled together. The limit is usually determined by heat output tolerance, cost of the units, and cost of the electricity to run them. The order of the limits may be different for different users. For example, if in a cold climate, a room heater might be desirable. In a low cost electricity area, the cost of electricity may not be a large a consideration.

A good thing about the quad-core arrangements is that the GFlops are directly applicable to folding, and potentially all types of work units could be folded, not just a select few.

Edited by dnamechanic, 13 May 2008 - 09:59 PM.


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#18 nefastor

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Posted 25 May 2008 - 10:42 PM

Motherboards connected by an Ethernet switch are NOT a supercomputer, they are a CLUSTER. There's a huge difference, which is beyond the scope of this thread. Let's just say that there's absolutely nothing remarkable about Microwulf, it's something most of us can built in less than a day from parts ordered on Newegg.

Case in point : the current "brain" for my world domination robot projects is the VIA Artigo. Here's a comprehensive review slash assembly guide :

(Sorry for the stupid beat music, the dorky dude on this video probably thought we're all deaf and don't care about what he could be saying)

Bottom line, this is a whole PC in a 5.25" case you can actually bolt into another PC. Take a cheap Sharkoon tower case with 12 x 5.25" bays, put in an Ethernet switch and a dozen Artigos and hey presto ! You get a 12-node Linux cluster the size of a regular PC. Plus, it will only require 240W of power (20W per node).

The Artigo is more expensive than $100/GFLOP, but this is a new form factor (and the Artigo is the first of its kind) and the price includes a hard drive and some extras you don't need on a cluster node (like a video and sound card).

If putting together a cluster of Mini-ITX motherboards makes you a liberator, then I must be Nelson Mandela. And what about this guy :

Posted Image
(from this site)

This particular cluster dates back to 2004, 3 years earlier, so maybe its maker should be the one teaching at Calvin College ?

At any rate, I strongly oppose the use the term supercomputer when referring to a cluster, unless it's presented as a "commodity supercomputer", which is the definition of a cluster.

Nefastor




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