this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, that's kind of a lot more Linux than I was expecting, but it also makes sense. Pretty cool tbh.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

Linux is just the unix flavor that replaced the others.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (5 children)

So basically, everybody switched from expensive UNIX™ to cheap "unix"-in-all-but-trademark-certification once it became feasible, and otherwise nothing has changed in 30 years.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

So you're telling me that there was a Mac super computer in '05?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If I recall correctly they linked a bunch of powermacs together with FireWire.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

It apparently later was transitioned to Xserves

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[–] [email protected] 172 points 23 hours ago (12 children)

Ah hahahaha!!!!

Windows! Some dumbass put Windows on a supercomputer!

[–] [email protected] 43 points 21 hours ago

Probably need one, just for the benchmark comparisons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago

And Mac! Whatever that means 🤣

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

Just need to do a dnf update on them all...

[–] [email protected] 50 points 23 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 93 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

The Big Mac. 3rd fastest when it was built and also the cheapest, costing only $5.2 million.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

3rd fastest

And 1st tastiest

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

That's highly debatable.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting. It's like those data centers that ran on thousands of Xboxes

[–] [email protected] 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Wha?

(searches interwebs)

Wow, that completely passed me by...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I think it was PS3 that shipped with "Other OS" functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.

Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3's, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.

I'm pretty sure Sony dropped "Other OS" not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.

Don't know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

It was 33rd in 2010:

In November 2010, the Air Force Research Laboratory created a powerful supercomputer, nicknamed the "Condor Cluster", by connecting together 1,760 consoles with 168 GPUs and 84 coordinating servers in a parallel array capable of 500 trillion floating-point operations per second (500 TFLOPS). As built, the Condor Cluster was the 33rd largest supercomputer in the world and was used to analyze high definition satellite imagery at a cost of only one tenth that of a traditional supercomputer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/playstations.jpg

https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

OMG I can feel the heat emanating from that photo

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Makes me think how PS2 had export restrictions because "its graphics chip is sufficiently powerful to control missiles equipped with terrain reading navigation systems"

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 23 hours ago

Oh Xserve, we hardly knew ye 😢

[–] [email protected] 18 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Mac is a flavor of Unix, not that surprising really.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 22 hours ago

Mac is also also derived from BSD since it is built on Darwin

[–] [email protected] 8 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Apple had its current desktop environment for it's proprietary ecosystem built on BSD with their own twist while supercomputers are typically multiuser parallel computing beats, so I'd say it is really fucking surprising. Pretty and responsive desktop environments and breathtaking number crunchers are the polar opposites of a product. Fuck me, you'll find UNIX roots in Windows NT but my flabbers would be ghasted if Deep Blue had dropped a Blue Screen.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

As someone who worked on designing racks in the super computer space about 10 q5vyrs ago I had no clue windows and mac even tried to entered the space

[–] [email protected] 34 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

about 10 q5vyrs ago

Have you been distracted and typed a password/PSK in the wrong field 8)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 22 hours ago

Lol typing on phone plus bevy. Can't defend it beyond that

[–] [email protected] 21 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

There was a time when a bunch of organisations made their own supercomputers by just clustering a lot of regular computers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(supercomputer)

For Windows I couldn't find anything.
If you google "Windows supercomputer", you just get lots of results about Microsoft supercomputers, which of course all run on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

No there was HPC sku of Windows 2003 and 2008 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2003#Windows_Compute_Cluster_Server

Microsoft earnestly tried to enter the space with a deployment system, a job scheduler and an MPI implementation. Licenses were quite cheap and they were pushing hard with free consulting and support, but it did not stick.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Would the one made out of playstations be in this statistic?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago

I think you can actually see it in the graph.
The Condor Cluster with its 500 Teraflops would have been in the Top 500 supercomputers from 2009 till ~2014.
The PS3 operating system is a BSD, and you can see a thin yellow line in that exact time frame.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (4 children)

When you really have to look deep into god's mind you just have to put templeOS on a supercomputer.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

You mean the NA/Mixed category?
Probably mostly z/OS and BS2000

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

How can there be N/A though? How can any functional computer not have an operating system? Or is just reading the really big MHz number of the CPU count as it being a supercomputer?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

They ofcouse had one, probably linux, or unix. But that information, about the cluster, is not available.

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