>> - 1U rack-mount form factor. (It's bloody heavy BTW.)
> 
> No, it's not. DL380G5 on 2U in size.

Really? It seems to be the same size as all the other 1U equipment. 
(Unless I got the model number wrong or something...)

>> - When mine arrived, I had to open it up and install the optional extras
>> myself. In particular, it is highly non-obvious how to remove the air
>> baffle. (And I don't want to break a £4,000 server in five minutes!) I
>> had to install the second CPU and the second pair of RAM boards.
> 
> You grab a hold on the baffle and take it out upwards. Yes, you'll need
> to sort out the SAS cables and possibly RAID-controllers battery, but
> it's no big deal.

It's more that it seems to be fixed in place, and you seem to need a 
surprising amount of force to get it to move.

OTOH, putting it *back* was way harder...

> Yes, the installation tool sucks. I've always removed the processor from
> it and installed the proc by hand.

Heh. Damned thing...

>> WHAT THE HELL MORE DO YOU WANT?!?!! >_<
> 
> Free tea? :)

LOL! That's about all that's missing...

>> ...although, having just said all that, the cable arm isn't as nice as
>> the Dell one. It's a bit flimsy, and bends in planes it shouldn't. 
> 
> Is it attached properly? It is flimsy if it's attached poorly, but
> pretty good when properly in place.

Well, there's a little catch that's supposed to make the arm stop and 
retain it in place. But it's so flimsy the arm easily rides over the top 
of it. :-/

(The fun part was that you can "invert" the arm, so it doesn't look like 
in the drawings. Took ages to figure that one out - especially as the 
springs hold it in a position that looks different to the manual.)

>> Also,
>> the automated installer doesn't support Windows 2000 Server, which is
>> what the company IT department wanted me to use. Wasted a few hours on
>> that one. But that's about all I can actually find to complain about.
> 
> Try 7-series Smartstart:

We tried an older version, but it didn't like our Windows CD. (The CD 
contains Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows 
2000 Professional on the same CD. It seemed to not like that.)

>> PS. What *the hell* is a "PPM"? And why is it 80% heatsink??
> 
> Processor Power Module. It regulates the power for the processor (that's
> why it's 80% heatsink).

Um... OK. That's pretty weird tho.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> - 1U rack-mount form factor. (It's bloody heavy BTW.)
>>
>> No, it's not. DL380G5 on 2U in size.
> 
> Really? It seems to be the same size as all the other 1U equipment.
> (Unless I got the model number wrong or something...)

Really :). I've installed 6 DL380G5's and 1 DL385G2 (which is pretty
common to DL380G5, just with AMD technology) within 2 weeks. There
usually are little triangles at racks, 2U has two of them and six square
holes within its size.

> It's more that it seems to be fixed in place, and you seem to need a
> surprising amount of force to get it to move.

Well yes, it's a bit tricky at first, but not *that* hard.

> OTOH, putting it *back* was way harder...

True :). But when you find the way, it just click to its place.

> Well, there's a little catch that's supposed to make the arm stop and
> retain it in place. But it's so flimsy the arm easily rides over the top
> of it. :-/

True.

> (The fun part was that you can "invert" the arm, so it doesn't look like
> in the drawings. Took ages to figure that one out - especially as the
> springs hold it in a position that looks different to the manual.)

True, it's a bit tricky at first (am I repeating myself?), but when you
get it sorted out, it's ok.

> We tried an older version, but it didn't like our Windows CD. (The CD
> contains Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows
> 2000 Professional on the same CD. It seemed to not like that.)

Ah yes, I think it needs the "real" CD at hand (or an ISO image, for
that matter).

>>> PS. What *the hell* is a "PPM"? And why is it 80% heatsink??
>>
>> Processor Power Module. It regulates the power for the processor (that's
>> why it's 80% heatsink).
> 
> Um... OK. That's pretty weird tho.
> 

Why? That way it's replaceable, if it should ever break down.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

>>>> - 1U rack-mount form factor. (It's bloody heavy BTW.)
>>> No, it's not. DL380G5 on 2U in size.
>> Really? It seems to be the same size as all the other 1U equipment.
>> (Unless I got the model number wrong or something...)
> 
> Really :). I've installed 6 DL380G5's and 1 DL385G2 (which is pretty
> common to DL380G5, just with AMD technology) within 2 weeks. There
> usually are little triangles at racks, 2U has two of them and six square
> holes within its size.

Hmm, OK. Maybe I was wrong then... :-S

>> It's more that it seems to be fixed in place, and you seem to need a
>> surprising amount of force to get it to move.
> 
> Well yes, it's a bit tricky at first, but not *that* hard.
> 
>> OTOH, putting it *back* was way harder...
> 
> True :). But when you find the way, it just click to its place.

More like, it makes a loud *snap* - as in "OMG, I think I broke it!"

...or, maybe I *did* break it?? o_O

>> Well, there's a little catch that's supposed to make the arm stop and
>> retain it in place. But it's so flimsy the arm easily rides over the top
>> of it. :-/
> 
> True.

The Dell arm has a bracket that's the full height of the arm. No way 
it's going to ride over that. It also has sprung-loaded folding clips to 
hold the cables, rather than (non-reusable) cable straps like HP supply.

>> (The fun part was that you can "invert" the arm, so it doesn't look like
>> in the drawings. Took ages to figure that one out - especially as the
>> springs hold it in a position that looks different to the manual.)
> 
> True, it's a bit tricky at first (am I repeating myself?), but when you
> get it sorted out, it's ok.

Heh. I just love the way I spent ages strapping down all the cables, and 
*then* noticed the power cable anchors in the box... ;-)

>>>> PS. What *the hell* is a "PPM"? And why is it 80% heatsink??
>>> Processor Power Module. It regulates the power for the processor (that's
>>> why it's 80% heatsink).
>> Um... OK. That's pretty weird tho.
> 
> Why? That way it's replaceable, if it should ever break down.

Yeah, but... why do you need to regulate this at all? Why does it need 
to be a seperate device? And why does it get so hot?? (Also, why do no 
other computers have these?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
>  Which is great if you just want something to happen when the
> user presses a button, but becomes problematic if you want things to
> happen while the user isn't pressing anything. (E.g., if you wanted to
> do something compute-bound, now the GUI stops responding until the
> compute task finishes.)

That's why the computer gods invented threads.

Seriously, it's the only sane way to do something compute-bound AND have a
GUI.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> Hmm, OK. Maybe I was wrong then... :-S

Apparently yes, but don't worry about being wrong, just learn more :).

> More like, it makes a loud *snap* - as in "OMG, I think I broke it!"
> 
> ...or, maybe I *did* break it?? o_O

I don't think so. So far I haven't found a single way to break it
without intention to do so.

> The Dell arm has a bracket that's the full height of the arm. No way
> it's going to ride over that. 

So did earlier HP's (4U ones), but it's easier to fit on the cables when
you can turn the arm backwards.

> It also has sprung-loaded folding clips to
> hold the cables, rather than (non-reusable) cable straps like HP supply.

That's a real fail with HP :/. We're using reusable Velcro-tape on that.

> Heh. I just love the way I spent ages strapping down all the cables, and
> *then* noticed the power cable anchors in the box... ;-)

:)

> Yeah, but... why do you need to regulate this at all? 

Because the PSU won't provide the exactly correct voltage?

> Why does it need
> to be a seperate device? And why does it get so hot?? (Also, why do no
> other computers have these?)

They do, but on your desktop computer it's welded on the mobo, along
with other parts there, so you won't notice it as easily. And it doesn't
usually get so hot, but they (AND you) want to be sure to be sure it has
enough cooling area (even in extreme circumstances with 2-3 fans failed)
- that's why it's so big and heavy.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Saul Luizaga wrote:
> BTW guys have you read/heard news about the 5TB/sqr. inch HP tape 
> back-up? I hope it could be in production so it arrives to my country in 
> about 6 months-1 year aprox., but again the price... probably is about 
> 1000 $us... :(
Sorry, that was IBM...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> Mine is configured like this:
> 
> - Dual redundant PSUs.
> - 2x quad-core Xeons at 2.0 GHz. (Yes, you read correctly. That's 8 
> cores in total.)
> - 4x 1 GB RAM (i.e., 4 GB RAM on two channels.)
> - 6x SAS 72 GB HDs spinning at 10,000 RPM. (Configured as two RAID-1 
> arrays with one hot spare and one cold spare.)

...OK, so I just got an Insight UK catelogue land on my desk. And what 
does it have splashed across the front page?

THE WORLD'S BEST SELLING SERVER

ENTERPRISE-CLASS RACK SERVER
HP PROLIANT DL380 G5
1x 2.5 GHz Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5420
2 GB memory expandable to 32 GB
Hot swap 2.5" bays

£1257.99 exVAT
ASK FOR: HPIA0432B

Heh. Well that's *not* what we paid. :-P (We paid nearer £4,000.) On the 
other hand... well, you compare the specs. It looks like HDs are about 
£1/GB, so I guess that's about right. Plus we demanded next-day 
delivery, so they possibly charged us more for that.

Post a reply to this message

...and now I'm going to waste an afternoon looking at expensive server 
hardware! :-D

Check this out:

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=HPIA04379C

That's a nice piece of hardware, but pretty expensive. And what does the 
enclosure cost??

Oh, "free enclosure"? *clicks* Ah, right. If you buy 8 blades, the 
enclosure is free. Um, yeah. Tad expensive! :-P

Ah, here we go:

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=HPOA03V0H

Look at that. A thousand pounds for an empty metal box. Heh. But hey, 
this one is even better:

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=HP40332100

That's £6k for a bigger empty box. It's like a license to print money! :-D

Gotta love the way Insight can't manage to list the enclosure on the 
page about the blade, or the blade on the page about the enclosure. :-P 
Yeah, great website guys.

Still, realistically... if I just want something with silly amounts of 
CPU power, there are cheaper ways to do that than a server. I just like 
the way servers look cool, that's all. Way cooler than the "extreme 
modded" gamer PCs! :-P

Post a reply to this message

On 3/3/2009 8:01 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Dangit! Now I have a the urge to write a C# version. I did the Towers of
> hanoi problem (with a solver) in C#, that entertained me for a while.

Did the world end when it finished? :0

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 3/3/2009 7:59 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Then I changed it so it played itself.

And it realized the futility of war :)

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 3/3/2009 12:03 PM, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Seriously, it's the only sane way to do something compute-bound AND have a
> GUI.

Not quite; you COULD implement scheduling / task switching in a single 
thread.  It would just be too much hassle when real threading is available.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 3/5/2009 8:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Still, realistically... if I just want something with silly amounts of
> CPU power, there are cheaper ways to do that than a server. I just like
> the way servers look cool, that's all. Way cooler than the "extreme
> modded" gamer PCs! :-P

Not to mention the Server uses space more economically than a room full 
of PCs would.  Not everyone has a spare floor in their building for the 
500+ PCs needed for their server farm; a few racks and an air 
conditioner, however, will fit in a much smaller space.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> Not quite; you COULD implement scheduling / task switching in a single
> thread.  It would just be too much hassle when real threading is
> available.

Most GUI toolkits either provide a function that blocks waiting for an
event, or take over control and call your callbacks (ie. event loop inside
the toolkit). How can you call anything else meanwhile?

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

> Not to mention the Server uses space more economically than a room full 
> of PCs would.  Not everyone has a spare floor in their building for the 
> 500+ PCs needed for their server farm; a few racks and an air 
> conditioner, however, will fit in a much smaller space.

That's what amused me about the "buy 8 blade servers and get the blade 
rack for free". Uh, yeah, sure. Each blade is £1,000, but if spend 
£8,000 you save yourself having to pay an extra £1,000 for the enclosure.

Wow, big deal. :-P

But then, today I thought... why would you bother with blades if you 
weren't going to have *lots* of them in the first place? If you only 
need 3 servers, why not just get ordinary rack-mount ones for a fraction 
of the price?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> How can you call anything else meanwhile?

Timer pulses. Tell the event loop to call your process ten times a second.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> Not quite; you COULD implement scheduling / task switching in a single 
> thread.  It would just be too much hassle when real threading is available.

Actually, if you get a good library for it, it can be beneficial in several 
ways.

For example, Erlang does this (one thread per core) and supports hundreds of 
thousands of concurrent threads (which would easily blow the stack and the 
scheduler if you used OS threads).

Tcl uses this approach (unless you opt for threads, of course) with the 
advantage that events that occur are serialized, so you can write code to 
handle events coming in from sockets that update shared globals without 
worrying about locks. Of course, if you have multiple cores, you're kind of 
screwed performance-wise with this approach, which is why Tcl supports real 
threads as well. Works great on a single CPU per process, tho.

The drawback is that without continuations as well (Tcl doesn't do lambdas 
any better than C++ does), it's hard to coordinate stuff sometimes, because 
you're always coming in at the top level. You have to turn all your loops 
inside out, basically.

I was thinking of looking at the Python asyncore module (which is what does 
this sort of thing for Python) and seeing if I could combine it with yield 
and send() to make lightweight isolated threads. Would be very cool.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

Post a reply to this message

On 3/8/2009 2:35 PM, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Most GUI toolkits either provide a function that blocks waiting for an
> event, or take over control and call your callbacks (ie. event loop inside
> the toolkit). How can you call anything else meanwhile?

Use a GUI toolkit designed with task scheduling on a single CPU w/o 
hardware interrupts.

What you're asking is like asking, "How can you implement raytracing 
with a graphics engine designed for scanline rendering?"  The answer 
being, of course, "Use a different engine" :)

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 3/8/2009 2:38 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> That's what amused me about the "buy 8 blade servers and get the blade
> rack for free". Uh, yeah, sure. Each blade is £1,000, but if spend
> £8,000 you save yourself having to pay an extra £1,000 for the enclosure.
>
> Wow, big deal. :-P

Hey, that's 11% off - I see stores running specials like that all the 
time :)

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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D***, your job sounds fun :)

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> Mine is configured like this:
> 
> - Dual redundant PSUs.
> - 2x quad-core Xeons at 2.0 GHz. (Yes, you read correctly. That's 8 
> cores in total.)
> - 4x 1 GB RAM (i.e., 4 GB RAM on two channels.)
> - 6x SAS 72 GB HDs spinning at 10,000 RPM. (Configured as two RAID-1 
> arrays with one hot spare and one cold spare.)

Muhuhuhuhuh!! Check out the attachment. LOOK AT ALL THOSE CORES!!! 8^D

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'cores.png' (19 KB)

Preview of image 'cores.png'

Chambers wrote:
> 
> Did the world end when it finished? :0
> 

Answer that question yourself. :P

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> On 3/3/2009 7:59 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Then I changed it so it played itself.
> 
> And it realized the futility of war :)
> 

Oh, good one :) Wargames ...

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 3/9/2009 10:29 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> On 3/3/2009 7:59 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
>>> Then I changed it so it played itself.
>>
>> And it realized the futility of war :)
>>
>
> Oh, good one :) Wargames ...
>

Yeah, that was a fun movie.  Haven't seen it in ages, though.  I wonder 
how well it's aged?

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

On 3/9/2009 2:46 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Muhuhuhuhuh!! Check out the attachment. LOOK AT ALL THOSE CORES!!! 8^D

That's nothing :)

Check out this shot from an article titled, appropriately enough, "A 
Task Manager view that makes me jealous — 256 cores" 
(http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?cat=31).

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download '256lp-hpsuperdome-sm.jpg' (57 KB)

Preview of image '256lp-hpsuperdome-sm.jpg'

Chambers wrote:
> Check out this shot from an article titled, appropriately enough, "A 
> Task Manager view that makes me jealous — 256 cores" 

I thought this was pretty funny - giant SSD RAID. The video's a lot more 

amusing than it sounds, especially starting about 1:15 in if you want to 

skip the set-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:05:24 -0700, Chambers wrote:

> On 3/9/2009 10:29 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>>> On 3/3/2009 7:59 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
>>>> Then I changed it so it played itself.
>>>
>>> And it realized the futility of war :)
>>>
>>>
>> Oh, good one :) Wargames ...
>>
>>
> Yeah, that was a fun movie.  Haven't seen it in ages, though.  I wonder
> how well it's aged?

Interesting question....

Would you like to play a game? ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> Muhuhuhuhuh!! Check out the attachment. LOOK AT ALL THOSE CORES!!! 8^D
> 
> That's nothing :)
> 
> Check out this shot from an article titled, appropriately enough, "A 
> Task Manager view that makes me jealous — 256 cores" 
> (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?cat=31).

o_O

Where the hell do you buy something like that?! And what do you use it for??

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:

> 
> Interesting question....
> 
> Would you like to play a game? ;-)
> 

Hmm. How about the Thermonuclear War simulation? That looks fun. Strange 
that its on a government computer, though. Oh well. What's the worst 
that could happen?


-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 3/11/2009 2:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Where the hell do you buy something like that?! And what do you use it
> for??

You use it for POV-Ray, of course! :)

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> On 3/11/2009 2:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Where the hell do you buy something like that?! And what do you use it
>> for??
> 
> You use it for POV-Ray, of course! :)
> 

Oooh... I'd LURVE to see that thing run 3.7 :D

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:03:01 -0500, Mike Raiford wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> 
>> Interesting question....
>> 
>> Would you like to play a game? ;-)
>> 
>> 
> Hmm. How about the Thermonuclear War simulation? That looks fun. Strange
> that its on a government computer, though. Oh well. What's the worst
> that could happen?

LOL

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Would you like to play a game? ;-)

Game Over. You lost 35 minutes ago. Please do not try again.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:50:53 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Would you like to play a game? ;-)
> 
> Game Over. You lost 35 minutes ago. Please do not try again.

e4

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 3/11/2009 7:19 AM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> On 3/11/2009 2:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Where the hell do you buy something like that?! And what do you use it
>>> for??
>>
>> You use it for POV-Ray, of course! :)
>>
>
> Oooh... I'd LURVE to see that thing run 3.7 :D
>

I'd have to wonder what kind of overhead you'd incur, though.

In order to make it worthwhile, you would need something that was 
compute intensive, but light on the memory subsystem.  This might be a 
problem with threads writing their results to the main viewport.  The 
scene file itself, of course, could be held in read-only shared memory.

I wonder, in the 3.7 source, does each thread have it's own framebuffer 
that gets reported back all at once, or do they report each pixel to the 
master framebuffer as they get processed?  From the way the tiles get 
displayed, I would assume the former.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

>> Oooh... I'd LURVE to see that thing run 3.7 :D
> 
> I'd have to wonder what kind of overhead you'd incur, though.
> 
> In order to make it worthwhile, you would need something that was 
> compute intensive, but light on the memory subsystem.  This might be a 
> problem with threads writing their results to the main viewport.  The 
> scene file itself, of course, could be held in read-only shared memory.
> 
> I wonder, in the 3.7 source, does each thread have it's own framebuffer 
> that gets reported back all at once, or do they report each pixel to the 
> master framebuffer as they get processed?  From the way the tiles get 
> displayed, I would assume the former.

I'm not 100% sure, but I *think* that Cray isn't even shared-memory. As 
in, it behaves like several seperate servers in the same box, and you'd 
need some kind of network protocol to communicate between the various 
units. So running POV-Ray on it would be like running POV-Ray on a 
cluster of networked PCs. You'd need the PVM mod or something.

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