[rescue] SGI files Ch11 again, bought by Rackable for $25M

[Robert Darlington]

Well, remember, it was 9 racks, but one was for the HIPPI routers.  So it
was 8 * 16 or 128 cpus per row, times 48 for 6144 cpus.

I verified it with a buddy of mine that at least part of this system is
still there to drive the displays for the graphical data for RoadRunner (#1
on the Top500).

-Bob

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:27 AM, <jodys at helluin.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:18:17AM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
> > HIPPI was the world's first gigabit networking system.  Friends of mine
> > worked with SGI to develop it, got an R&D 100 award out of the deal etc.
> > Major breakthrough at the time (late 1990s I guess, before my time
> there).
> > When I came on, I was mostly handling software and OS stuff so I didn't
> have
> > my hands inside the machines too often.  I do remember seeing the thick
> > cables though and having to work around them.  One "router rack" with 4
> > O2000 racks on each side with the heavy HIPPI cable interconnects.  So 9
> > racks total per row, times 48 rows deep.   LOTS of cable.
> >
> > Later we experimented with the Origin 3200 line, testing R bricks
> (routers
> > for the ccNUMA interconnects) vs Myranet and such.   Good times.
>
> Wow! Origin 2000 was 16 CPU per rack, so 9 racks times 16 is 144, 144
> cpus times 48 rows is 6912 cpus. No wonder they used HIPPI, I believe that
> Origin 2000, with the last routers, maxed out at 512 cpus.
>
> Just to clarify, HIPPI and NUMAlink are two seperate things. I imagine
> that NUMAlink connected up Origin 2000 compute nodes into larger
> cc-NUMA systems, those larger systems then must have been interconnected
> with HIPPI.
>
> I have some fiber HIPPI gear for my SGI gear and, one of these days, I'll
> get
> around to setting it up.
>
> Jody
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