My first response was to chuckle. As you know, the entire concept of Beowulf clusters was based largely on using hardware that was not supposed to be used. "You can't use desktop x86 and Ethernet for supercomputing!" (as it was called at the time)
We also know Intel decided to fuse off the processors so they could reduce features for the desktop and thereby charge more for "server processors" And, this fact has been the basis for my construction of high performance desk-side clusters. Same basic guts, slower memory, but much cheaper. And in many cases similar performance. NVidia did the same with the ratio of SP vs DP, and ECC but deep learning (DL) has no need for DP (or even SP) so a $700 video card is a bargain for DL type stuff. BTW, I find it interesting one of the most popular codes run on Nvidia GPUs is Amber (MD). It has been optimized to use SP when it can and many Amber users turn off ECC because it slows down the GPU which translates to runs really well on Nvidia video cards. I'm actually building a dual 1080ti box to run Amber for one of my customers this month. Fortunately it won't go in a data center but in the lab. So when the Nvidia police investigate the students can quickly switch over to GTA. -- Doug > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/ > > Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you > want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto > forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want. > > Looks like Stallman was right all along. > > -L > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > > -- > MailScanner: Clean > > -- Doug -- MailScanner: Clean _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
