Nekonomicon - visit to Fujitsu

maxsleg
From Stuttgart
Who joined April 3, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 21, 2013, 4:27 a.m...

I have been in Tokyo this week on business and I was with Fujitsu this morning. In the lobby of the corporate building they had a very nice display of the Prime FX10 Supercomputer. The cooling is immense, very impressive. Will upload some pictures. Also great view of Mt. Fuji from top floor..

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/ ... /primehpc/

ClassicHasClass
Donor
From Sunny So Cal
Who joined July 25, 2012, 7:12 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 21, 2013, 5:45 p.m...

It's good to see *someone*'s committed to SPARC (Snoracle certainly isn't).

smit happens.

:Fuel:

bigred , 900MHz R16K, 4GB RAM, V12 DCD, 6.5.30
:Indy:

indy , 150MHz R4400SC, 256MB RAM, XL24, 6.5.10
:Indigo2IMP:

purplehaze , 175MHz R10000, Solid IMPACT
probably posted from

bruce , Quad 2.5GHz PowerPC 970MP, 16GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.11
plus IBM POWER6 p520 * Apple Network Server 500 * HP C8000 * BeBox * Solbourne S3000 * Commodore 128 * many more...

commodorejohn
Who joined Oct. 2, 2012, 1:22 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 21, 2013, 7:55 p.m...

Any last outposts of alternative architectures in this era of creeping x86/ARM duoculture are worthy of my respect.

Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/D-50/MT-32/SC-55k, Ensoniq SQ-80/Mirage, Yamaha DX7/V-50/FB-01/SY22, Korg DW-8000/MS-20 Mini/ARP Odyssey/M1/03-RW, E-mu Emax HD/Proteus/2, Rhodes Chroma Polaris

ClassicHasClass
Donor
From Sunny So Cal
Who joined July 25, 2012, 7:12 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 22, 2013, 5:24 p.m...

I like SPARC, though the register windows rapidly proved the wrong way to go (everybody else went the other way). If there's going to be an alternative, it's going to either be MIPS or POWER, because they're really all that's left except for small cores like Blackfin.

That said, I just pulled the trigger on a 3G Samsung ARM Chromebook. Better than buying Intel.

smit happens.

:Fuel:

bigred , 900MHz R16K, 4GB RAM, V12 DCD, 6.5.30
:Indy:

indy , 150MHz R4400SC, 256MB RAM, XL24, 6.5.10
:Indigo2IMP:

purplehaze , 175MHz R10000, Solid IMPACT
probably posted from

bruce , Quad 2.5GHz PowerPC 970MP, 16GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.11
plus IBM POWER6 p520 * Apple Network Server 500 * HP C8000 * BeBox * Solbourne S3000 * Commodore 128 * many more...

maxsleg
From Stuttgart
Who joined April 3, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 23, 2013, 2:09 a.m...

: FX10 Supercomputer in Fujitsu corporate lobby

A photo

amazing plumbing

maxsleg
From Stuttgart
Who joined April 3, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 23, 2013, 2:21 a.m...

view from 20th floor

ShadeOfBlue
Moderator
From Europe
Who joined Nov. 25, 2003, 12:09 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 23, 2013, 5:03 a.m...

This looks really cool

Do you have any pictures of the boards inside?

maxsleg
From Stuttgart
Who joined April 3, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 23, 2013, 7:56 a.m...

no, I did look but this was all that was on public display.

jpstewart
Donor
From Southwestern Ontario, Canada
Who joined Sept. 21, 2010, 3:31 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 8:19 a.m...

maxsleg wrote: amazing plumbing

Isn't it always a sign of a "serious computer" when installing it requires a plumber?

It must have been awesome to see in person. Thanks for posting the pic!

Sun SPARCstation 20, Blade 2500
HP C8000

commodorejohn
Who joined Oct. 2, 2012, 1:22 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 10:15 a.m...

bluecode wrote:

commodorejohn wrote: Any last outposts of alternative architectures in this era of creeping x86/ARM duoculture are worthy of my respect.

You're the guy running NT on Alpha, aren't you?

Then no.

And running VMS on VAX...and RT-11 on PDP-11...and Kickstart/Workbench 3.1 on Amiga...there's room for variety, is what I'm saying.

How many people actually have any interaction with the hardware? UNIX boxes are 99% C and the rest is assembly wrapped in C. Most UNIX and Windows programmers are completely isolated from the box they're coding on. The API is the machine. Does it really matter what the architecture is as long as it performs as you want?

The API is not the machine, because you take the machine away and the API is just a collection of theory. Hardware will always matter because without it software is irrelevant. (Besides which, even in the RISC world architectures differ significantly in performance characteristics for different applications.) The idea that we've reached (or will reach) some kind of transcendent state wherein software runs in an ethereal realm of Pure Computation where the concerns of the physical processor world cannot touch it is futurist silliness.

Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/D-50/MT-32/SC-55k, Ensoniq SQ-80/Mirage, Yamaha DX7/V-50/FB-01/SY22, Korg DW-8000/MS-20 Mini/ARP Odyssey/M1/03-RW, E-mu Emax HD/Proteus/2, Rhodes Chroma Polaris

hamei
From over the rainbow
Who joined Feb. 24, 2004, 4:10 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 5:47 p.m...

commodorejohn wrote: The idea that we've reached (or will reach) some kind of transcendent state wherein software runs in an ethereal realm of Pure Computation where the concerns of the physical processor world cannot touch it is futurist silliness.

Nothing new here ... in our entire world, reality has no influence on the wackoffmeisters in control.

commodorejohn
Who joined Oct. 2, 2012, 1:22 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 6:19 p.m...

Don't get me started, man.

Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/D-50/MT-32/SC-55k, Ensoniq SQ-80/Mirage, Yamaha DX7/V-50/FB-01/SY22, Korg DW-8000/MS-20 Mini/ARP Odyssey/M1/03-RW, E-mu Emax HD/Proteus/2, Rhodes Chroma Polaris

hamei
From over the rainbow
Who joined Feb. 24, 2004, 4:10 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 6:59 p.m...

commodorejohn wrote: Don't get me started, man.

To head back towards the subject ...

Speaking of futurist fantasy wackoffmeisters, it's kind of funny. Since about 1980 they have all been castigating Japan for a "lack of growth ! stagnation ! what will they do when the older generation retires ?" and other conventional-wisdom bullshit.

Meanwhile, the oracles in the west put all their eggs into the finance basket.

Japan is now doing fine, about the same as they have for the past two thousand years, while the US is bankrupt and inflating its money to weimar heights in order to pretend that their retarded ponzi scheme was a viable way to live.

Japan and probably Fujitsu will still be around in another hundred years.

bluecode
Who joined Dec. 13, 2011, 7:56 a.m.
and authored 125 notes

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 11:23 p.m...

commodorejohn wrote:

bluecode wrote:

commodorejohn wrote:

Any last outposts of alternative architectures in this era of creeping x86/ARM duoculture are worthy of my respect.

You're the guy running NT on Alpha, aren't you?

Then no. :lol:

And running VMS on VAX...and RT-11 on PDP-11...and Kickstart/Workbench 3.1 on Amiga...there's room for variety, is what I'm saying.

Sorry, man. No intent to pick on you. Just lamenting the state of affairs from a different angle. Unfortunately the point is still to most people the hardware doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to any C programmer if the hardware has register windows or a stack, etc. By the time the coder sees it it's all abstracted away unless he's writing the OS. It's only for those of us who love assembly programming the hardware matters but stuff like UNIX has made hardware magnitudes less relevant. The API is the machine. You will be assimilated.

commodorejohn wrote:

bluecode wrote:

How many people actually have any interaction with the hardware? UNIX boxes are 99% C and the rest is assembly wrapped in C. Most UNIX and Windows programmers are completely isolated from the box they're coding on. The API is the machine. Does it really matter what the architecture is as long as it performs as you want?

The API is not the machine, because you take the machine away and the API is just a collection of theory. Hardware will always matter because without it software is irrelevant. (Besides which, even in the RISC world architectures differ significantly in performance characteristics for different applications.) The idea that we've reached (or will reach) some kind of transcendent state wherein software runs in an ethereal realm of Pure Computation where the concerns of the physical processor world cannot touch it is futurist silliness.

APIs are not a collection of theory. It is the hardware as the OS presents it to you. Unless you're writing your own OS this is where your reality begins and ends. You can't see or touch anything below that.

Software is relevant without hardware. Software is an abstraction, hardware is an abstraction. You can run software through your head without any hardware. If you're an engineer you can run hardware through your head. It all depends on your world view. Everything is increasingly abstracted away and good hardware mostly doesn't matter any more, because nobody gets close to it. That's what I'm saying. There was a time when all this mattered but every day it gets further and further away...

"My advice to you, is to start drinking heavily..."

_________________
Paint It Blue

commodorejohn
Who joined Oct. 2, 2012, 1:22 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 25, 2013, 11:48 p.m...

Nothing is dead and gone until the last devotee dies and all of the books are burned, man. Unless that happens, it's all just wax and wane. Right now, sure, there aren't many people paying attention to anything at the lower level. But there's still call for assembler optimization in performance programming, console developers still get their hands dirty exploiting a fixed set of hardware, and the development of GPUs into massively-multicore stream processors is opening up a whole new avenue for wild and wonderful experimentation. And eventually, when Moore's Law hits the wall imposed by that pesky physics and multicore computing reaches its peak efficiency, you're gonna see a return to the days of widespread low-level optimization, as the world tries to shake its addiction to an ever-increasing horsepower level that it simply can't have anymore...take heart, my friend.

Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/D-50/MT-32/SC-55k, Ensoniq SQ-80/Mirage, Yamaha DX7/V-50/FB-01/SY22, Korg DW-8000/MS-20 Mini/ARP Odyssey/M1/03-RW, E-mu Emax HD/Proteus/2, Rhodes Chroma Polaris

foetz
Moderator
Who joined April 14, 2003, 4:34 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 26, 2013, 12:22 a.m...

i guess most in here are fans of variety; and for many good reasons. but details there would go too far off-topic.
however to bridge both issues the japanese did fortunately not go with the flow so much compared to most other regions and countries. the next nec sx is still scheduled, fujitsu keep running sparc, hitatchi who got quite a number of custom stuff and not to forget sgi japan who always were a bit different.
the fact alone that fujitsu have a big iron sparc in their lobby is a good sign that not everybody and everything get assimilated by ipad/intel/twitter morals. resistance is not futile

btw i got a 73gb fujitsu disk in my server-octane and it's great

r-a-c.de

maxsleg
From Stuttgart
Who joined April 3, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 26, 2013, 5:02 a.m...

The Prime FX is the main 'point of interest' in the lobby display (which is actually downstairs from the lobby). I have been to NEC a few times and in their Telecomms section they have a small museum on undersea/submarine cables and their rugby team!

ramq
From Sweden
Who joined Jan. 25, 2008, 6:06 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 26, 2013, 10:46 p.m...

Impressive hardware, really. Didn't know Fujitsu entered HPC?

zmttoxics
Who joined Aug. 31, 2009, 9:11 a.m.

Wrote the following at March 1, 2013, 7 a.m...

ramq wrote: Impressive hardware, really. Didn't know Fujitsu entered HPC?

Almost everything SPARC64 with a Sun or Oracle badge on it came from Fujitsu, most notable is the M class series such as the M9000. They have been this space for a while...

Stuff.

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at March 1, 2013, 9:23 a.m...

ramq wrote: Didn't know Fujitsu entered HPC?

As of November 2012 Fujitsu had the third most powerful supercomputer in the Top 500 (top500.org): "Rounding out the top five systems are Fujitsu’s K computer installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan (No. 3)," a SPARC 64 with 705024 cores capable of peaking at 11280.4 TFlops... :shock:

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

Japan

visit to Fujitsu - Page 1