Prentice Bisbal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Quote from article: > > "It's also attempting to lure scientists and researchers with > discretionary IT budgets to forget using shared, giant clusters and get > their own box and tuck it in behind their desk where no one can see it > to run their workloads locally. The personal supercomputer is not a new > idea, but this is the first time that Cray is trying it out in the market." > > That will work great until the newbie scientists find that airflow into > a computer tucked in "behind their desk where no one can see it" is piss > poor, and that fans powerful enough to provide adequate airflow "behind > the desk where no one can see it" are going to be LOUD.
Well, they _might_ be able to muffle the air flow noise with an expensive, and most likely large, case design. The one thing they can't get away from is the heat. Anything "super", meaning much faster than an average desktop, is going to use a lot of power, and 1000W is roughly where I would imagine this sort of machine would sit, the upper limit being set by the need to leave at least 500W for incidentals like small printers, phones, displays and the like, on the same 15A circuit. 1000W is too much heat to have under ones desk, unless a dramatically lowered sperm count is the goal. It is also pushing the edge of the AC capacity for a small office. On the other hand, if Cray can make it reasonably quiet it should be ok in a lab environment, even at 1000W. Labs have better air flow, higher AC capacity, and better power (multiple 20A circuits are common) than do offices. Labs are better, but not THAT much better, so if everybody in the lab wants one, you might be back to needing a machine room, at which point the expensive quiet case was a waste of money. Or worse, they might not fit in racks. Regards, David Mathog [EMAIL PROTECTED] Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
