Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Tuesday June 26, 2007

[ Technology ] PostgreSQL Scaling

Jignesh Shah writes about PostgreSQL 8.2.4 Scaling on Sun Fire T2000 with Solaris 10 11/06.

2007-06-26 20:46:45.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases postgresql

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Constellation in Dresden

I still remember using Sun Microsystems Inc. machines when I was a graduate student doing scientific computing work at University of California, at Stanford's CTR and at NASA Ames. One particular summer, in 1987, my objective was very clear: to compute conditional probabilities of rare events based on direct numerical simulations of chaotic physical systems. Even back then it was clear that the world of supercomputing and scientific computing machines was a changing and difficult world to satisfy.

Scientific computing bars have been continuously rising since engineers and scientists used the first digital computers in the 50s and 60s to perform calculations resting on all kinds of scientific problems.

Sun broke into this market in a big way when it first introduced its scientific computing desktops and graphics stations in the mid 1980s, and later, its bigger computing servers.

Now, Don Clark of The Wall Street Journal has reported Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Constellation announcement at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Dresden, Germany.

[Sun Microsystems Inc.] says it now has technology to build the world's biggest scientific systems.
The Silicon Valley computer maker today is providing new details about a massive machine called Constellation, which includes an unusual high-capacity switching system for passing data among thousands of chips that act as electronic brains in the system. Sun developed the machine in collaboration with the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, which is installing the hardware in its facility in Austin.
Andreas Bechtolsheim, a Sun co-founder who is its chief architect, attacked the problem with a massive switching system -- with the code name Magnum -- that by itself can manage high-speed data traffic for 3,456 calculating engines in a supercomputer, Mr. [John] Fowler said. Other approaches would take 300 smaller switching components, the company says. Mr. Bechtolsheim even designed special cables so that just one-sixth the number of wires is necessary to assemble a system.

When we talk about the Constellation, we are talking about hundreds of teraFLOPS.

Sun Microsystems High Performance Computing group is one of the sponsors of the ISC meeting.

2007-06-26 19:04:13.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
computing constellation scientific sun work

[ Art (هنر) ] If one day you journey away ...

A French Canadian has produced an interesting rendition of Faramarz Aslani's "If One Day You Journey Away ..." (Agheh Ye Rooz Beri Safar) song in the original Persian. Her next goal should probably be works by Dr. Mohammad Esfahani, say the ones in his recent album Barakat.

The only problem is we cannot hear her play her guitar here. For that, we may consult the young duo of brothers playing the song: