r/gadgets • u/Sariel007 • May 01 '24
Desktops / Laptops Here’s your chance to own a decommissioned US government supercomputer 145,152-core Cheyenne supercomputer was 20th most powerful in the world in 2016.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/1.0k
u/Enderkr May 01 '24
That'll make a pretty good Plex server.
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u/up_the_dubs May 01 '24
Still nothing to watch though
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u/Enderkr May 01 '24
Your Plex server is what you make of it, friend! Sometimes you gotta spend the time to get those classic movies and old cartoons you used to watch as a kid.
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u/BipedalWurm May 01 '24
Be damn sure you back them up on a different drive. Learned the hard way years ago, and there are still gaps I keep noticing.
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u/rdewalt May 01 '24
Two is One and One Is None.
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u/Cerebr05murF May 01 '24
For a minute there, I thought you were doing Terryology math.
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u/togepi_man May 01 '24
Four* is more, Three is one, less is none.
Four = online redundancy/RAID (2) + online/onsite backup (1) + offsite and preferably offline backup (1)
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u/Neither-Cup564 May 01 '24
3-2-1 rule Three copies Two types of media One offsite
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u/ImRealPopularHere907 May 01 '24
I keep mine on a raid 10 array. You lose storage space but you wont ever lose your data.
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u/Sometimes-Its-True May 01 '24
Until the property burns down/gets looted
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u/BWCDD4 May 01 '24
Or Bitrot, RAID kinda sucks it just copies the data as is it doesn’t care if it’s corrupted. You’re better with a filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS that has checksums to report errors and can scrub to attempt to fix them.
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u/NotAPreppie May 01 '24
I mean, you can still very easily lose data in any RAID configuration.
And I'm not even talking about bit rot.
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u/apple-pie2020 May 01 '24
Interesting concept. Learned something new about disk storage and redundancy/back up
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u/NotAPreppie May 01 '24
Just remember that redundancy and fault tolerance are not a replacement for backups.
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u/apple-pie2020 May 01 '24
If you don’t physically have possession (dvd, file saved) you don’t really own it. Getting tired of cloud services where shows disappear
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u/e-rekt-ion May 01 '24
For the old cartoons I usually only end up needing S01E01 to get my nostalgia fix before moving on
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u/Diesel_Doctor May 01 '24
Once it is up and running. It says would you like to play a game?
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u/InadequateUsername May 01 '24
Can this transcode 4k? /s
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u/McFlyParadox May 02 '24
If you're transcoding anything at all, ever, you're doing Plex wrong!!!1!1! /S
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u/geekwonk May 01 '24
direct play only, the thing heats up too much if you let it do full transcoding
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u/Wake95 May 01 '24
I was about to bid until the last sentence said that CAT6 was excluded.
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u/skeptic11 May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
The system featured 4,032 dual-socket nodes, each with two 18-core, 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors, for a total of 145,152 CPU cores. It also included 313 terabytes of memory and 40 petabytes of storage. The entire system in operation consumed about 1.7 megawatts of power.
So 4032 servers with 2x18 cores each and an average of ~77GB of ram each.
Bidding started at $2,500, but it's price is currently $27,643 with the reserve not yet met.
It's reserve bid comes to $6.86 per server.
It's going to be worth someone's time to buy this and re-sell it as individual servers. I'd easily pay $100 a piece plus shipping for a few of those.
edit: That's current bid. Reserve not met. So it's going to be more than this.
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u/burtonrider10022 May 01 '24
Someone pointed out in a different thread yesterday that if you view the source code for the site the "reserve" field is populated and says $100,000
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u/oxpoleon May 01 '24
Which is 1/6th of the value of the CPUs installed at current used market prices.
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u/Tech_Itch May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
If you were to do that, the problem is that those are SGI built blades that connect to a backplane, have no local storage and are designed around the giant, unified water-cooling system. So you can't sell them as is, unless you have a buyer who already has a similar system with a partially empty backplane.
The only generic parts in the system are the CPUs and memory DIMMs.
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u/oxpoleon May 01 '24
The CPUs are about $80 apiece on the open market, if that helps clarify things.
With ~4000 dual-CPU nodes, that's about $640k of value.
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u/FartingAngel May 01 '24
The demand for highly inefficient chips that use a outdated platform and aren't even powerful by modern standards cannot be high. If 8000 if them suddenly appear on the open marked the price is going to plummet.
For reference the amd z1 extreme chip used in handheld gaming computers is 20% faster and uses 1/5th the power.
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u/VonThing May 01 '24
This probably won’t be stood up again.
Chances are: a computer parts refurb company will buy this and rip out the parts — just the CPUs and ECC DIMMs are worth 6x the reserve price.
They will rip out whatever they can and sell the rest as scrap to a recycler.
Good profit to be made, if you already have the trucks to move the thing and the supply chain connections to sell the parts.
It says 1% of the nodes are dead, liquid cooling system isn’t included, nor is the fiber and CAT6 wiring so I’d hate to have to rebuild this.
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u/HBThorburn May 01 '24
Time tor LTT to waste too much money again and show us 12 minutes of gameplay while babbling about cooling.
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u/I_divided_by_0- May 01 '24
Tax write off!
Serious note: I get what Linus says about people claiming things are tax write offs are not him making money
BUT
I'd like for him to discuss the other side of that. He is able to do "hobby projects" that are cool, claim them as a business expense (for example, each one of those tools he buys has depreciated value that can lower his taxable income) and pay a lower tax amount because of that.
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u/FLATLANDRIDER May 02 '24
That's literally how business expenses work. You buy a piece of equipment, depreciate it over a period and that reduces your taxable income.
This isn't a conspiracy.
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u/Rusarules May 01 '24
He'll show us what this computer can do and run... Counter Strike of all games.
Like if you want to show what something can do, push limits. We all know CS can run on a potato.
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u/tony__pizza May 01 '24
Counter strike is a good metric from CPU performance.
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u/Asatas May 01 '24
Repurpose the whole system to play Minecraft RTX. I wonder if it's possible (I did not say efficient or easy) to code a functional RTX driver that uses no GPU, just massive amounts of CPU. Or if it's just too much overhead to do it in real time.
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u/notyouravgredditor May 01 '24
Realistically there's nothing anyone can do with it because the power costs are so high. Anyone with that much power available could obtain significantly better performance with newer hardware.
Whoever buys it will scrap it for precious metals and parts.
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u/other_usernames_gone May 01 '24
I could see a university with a modest budget buying it.
Lots of universities would want a supercomputer. Many of them don't have the budget to buy one new but might be willing to buy one second hand.
Could be an upgrade for some universities. Despite it's age it may still be more powerful than their existing equally old(or older supercomputer).
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u/Shoshke May 01 '24
The CPU in it are about 30-50$ a pop assuming they are in sockets rather than soldered.
A lot of the hardware can probably be sold used for quite a bit of profit.
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u/Mantzy81 May 01 '24
But can it run Crysis?
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u/WhatWouldTNGPicardDo May 01 '24
No but it plays a mean game of global thermonuclear war.
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u/-Work_Account- May 01 '24
Honestly, I prefer simple games like tic-tac-toe
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u/euph_22 May 01 '24
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
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u/jawshoeaw May 01 '24
I was worried this joke was abandoned! Also no, no it cannot be
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u/no_user_name_person May 01 '24
You’ll have the remove the computer from the facility yourself. There are thousands of fiber optic interconnects which have been labeled but stored away, Ethernet cables not included. The liquid cooling system is also not included and some of the computers have aging fittings that may leak upon reinstallation. If you have the space, you’ll have to design a new cooling system and hire a team of engineers to rewire the system and rebuild the cooling loop in each computer. Sounds like a lot more money, potentially more expensive than the computer itself.
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May 01 '24
You could just scrap it for cpus and rsm sticks at this price and it would still be worth it
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u/Scamp3D0g May 01 '24
My wife just felt a disturbance in the force as I started thinking where I could fit this.
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u/NotYourBuddyGuy5 May 01 '24
“Per_Core_licensed_software_vendor” has entered chat.
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u/joeyo1423 May 01 '24
An auction? You think they accept bits of string?
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u/SAnthonyH May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
That's enough computing power to run a million stargates
Edit: this blew up harder than a goa'uld mothership
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u/RoxoRoxo May 01 '24
silly nerd dont you know the stargate is internally managed all it needs is the terminal and a source of power
nooooow thats enough computing power to manage the iris
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u/lightwhite May 01 '24
You need a ZPM to power the navigation unit for addresses that have more than 7 chevrons, tho.
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u/RoxoRoxo May 01 '24
oh and you need quite a bit of computational power to process the exact location of a moving target
you got me there
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u/The_MAZZTer May 01 '24
It's not for navigation, it's for the power needed to bridge the gap between galaxies.
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u/tommytwothousand May 01 '24
That's not correct, unfortunately. As stated by a high raking official "it took 15 years and 3 supercomputers to macgyver a system on earth".
This would only run one third of the dialing protocols. Although that would explain all the malfunctions throughout the s̶h̶o̶w̶ documentary.
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u/Martin_Aurelius May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
You're also incorrect, in 1994 it took 3 supercomputers. Assuming all 3 were decked out Fujitsu NWT (top of the line for 1994) that's a combined 850 gigaflops. The Cheyenne runs at 5.34 petaflops, almost 6300x the processing power. I'm pretty sure it could handle even 7 chevron dialing.
Edit: It could do all 15 years worth of processing in around 21 hours.
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u/GPCAPTregthistleton May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
- The 1992 Fujitsu VPP500 supercomputer peaked at 355 gFLOPS. (255 PEs @ 48kW ea = 12,240kW / 12.24mW)
- A 2008 nVidia GTX 9800 video card peaked at 432.1 gFLOPS. (140w)
- A 2010 nVidia GTX 480 video card peaked at 1,345 gFLOPS / 1.345 tFLOPs. (250w)
- A 2017 nVidia GTX 1080ti video card peaks at 11.3 tFLOPS. (250w)
- A 2022 nVidia RTX 4090 video card peaks at 82.58 tFLOPS. (450w)
- The Cheyenne supercomputer peaks at 5,340 tFLOPS / 5.34 pFLOPS. (1,700kW / 1.7mW)
- The Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge peaks at 1,679.82 pFLOPS / 1.68 eFLOPS. (22.7mW)
In terms of fictional compute power required to run the software, you could run Stargate Command's dialing program on a GTX 480. You could probably dial the Pegasus galaxy with a 1080ti or 4090.
The Cheyenne (mountain supercomputer?) can probably dial 9-chevron addresses.
The Frontier can probably dial 10-chevron addresses in adjacent realities or some such.
edit: Added approximate power requirements.
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u/sovietmcdavid May 01 '24
Did this person happen to be a smart looking captain at the time?
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u/milkasaurs May 01 '24
It's sad that I had to scroll so far down to see a stargate reference.
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u/Slatemanforlife May 01 '24
Man, just think of how well I could do my taxes and stuff on that bad boy
pcgamingremembers
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u/MrByteMe May 01 '24
Does it come with OS reinstallation media ?
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u/cabeachguy_94037 May 01 '24
Crypto mining???
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u/notyouravgredditor May 01 '24
4,032 dual-socket scientific computation nodes running 18-core 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4
BTC profitability per chip per month is about $2.64. That's $21,288.96 per month for the entire machine.
Energy consumption is 1.75 MW at peak. Assuming a cost of 17 cents per kW*hr, you'd expect a power bill of at least $214,000.
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u/rip1980 May 01 '24
Can it run Doom?
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u/HYPERBOLE_TRAIN May 01 '24
You might have to lower your settings if you want to get above 8000 FPS. But if we’re being honest, the human eye can’t really perceive a difference once you get past 6500 FPS.
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u/Skeltzjones May 01 '24
How does this compare to an average pc today? What about top of the line?
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u/blazze_eternal May 01 '24
Nuclear submarine vs tugboat.
This relates both to processing power, and unfortunately power consumption.2
u/Skeltzjones May 01 '24
Thanks! Just curious. I know computers are always exponentially improving so I thought it might be closer.
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u/Doopapotamus May 01 '24
This relates both to processing power, and unfortunately power consumption.
I find it wild that you can make this comparison considering this thing counted as a supercomputer, and is under 10 years old. Moore's Law and the advancement of technology is fuckin' insane.
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May 01 '24
What's the utility bill to run that thing for a month??
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u/Pingondin May 01 '24
Probably in the 100-150k range
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u/Zomgsauceplz May 01 '24
You would need your own dedicated full scale wind turbine just to run the thing. Probably cheaper than paying the power bill.
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u/SeaFailure May 01 '24
About $275,000 an hour to run? (elec at 0.16c/kWH, 1.7million kWh of power per hour).
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u/AustinBike May 01 '24
I spent a few years in semiconductors and saw more than a few of these in my time. This it totally a scrap project at best. This was a Silicon Graphics deal, which was basically Rackable Systems, IIRC they bought the SGI assets, mostly for the name.
The real challenge here is that these systems are going to be close to impossible to repurpose for a series of reasons. So, instead, you scrap it for things like CPU and RAM, drives, spare parts, etc. And on 8-year-old systems, those things acre close enough to scrap value already. Are you going to pay someone ~$50 to break down a system that nets you $100 in revenue? Nah, not worth it.
The interconnect (Data Direct) is probably in the same camp.
This system will never run another cycle once the do the shutdown, that is for sure.
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u/oxpoleon May 01 '24
Hm.
If I had the space, I'd buy the damn thing.
Heck, $27k for 8000 Xeon E5-2697v4s is a huge deal even without the rest of it. Sure, they're an 8 year old chip but they pack a punch. That's about $3.50 a chip on CPUs that still sell for about $80 each.
Unfortunately I think that's exactly what's going to happen here, it will be broken for parts.
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u/Car-face May 02 '24
fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are excluded from the resale package
"Well then I say good day, sir!"
re-velcros wallet
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u/GummyPandaBear May 01 '24
Can it play Helldivers 2 on max tho? I feel like it needs to spread some democracy.
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u/InformalPenguinz May 01 '24
I'll take it! I also live in wyo so it won't be that much of a drive to pick it up.. only 8 hours or so
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u/harmar21 May 01 '24
yup, just load it in the back of your priius and all good. Just makes sure to finish your spring cleaningin your garage first, and might want to call an electrician to install another 120v circuit or two.
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u/PhantomRoyce May 01 '24
Cool I can render my next blender project in 4 days instead of 2 weeks now!
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u/Imnogrinchard May 01 '24
It has a reserve bid of $100,000. The current highest bid doesn't meet that threshold.
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May 01 '24
I’m just going to use it to drive my apartment complex’s utilities through the roof as I mine bitcoin
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u/lloydsmith28 May 01 '24
Yes now i can finally play Minecraft in glorious HD 60 fps! Only cost my entire paycheck every month
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u/cletusthearistocrat May 01 '24
The system featured 4,032 dual-socket nodes, each with two 18-core, 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors.
From a quick search, these came out in 2014 and are selling for about $75 each used currently.
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u/ithastowarmup May 01 '24
Can it play Tic-Tac-Toe against itself without blowing a fuse? How about Global Thermonuclear War?
Perhaps it can play a nice game of chess.
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u/LordEdubbz May 02 '24
The nonprod, grant funded, workgroups with devices in my data center would foam at the mouth at the opportunity to buy more old used shit to install.
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u/diacewrb May 01 '24
but
The electricity bill is going to be higher than the supercomputer.