[oz42]

A colleague of mine is working on some new hardware and wanted to get feedback from the Maxwell forum about how interested you guys would be?

He's developing some hardware that merges together multiple motherboards to effectively appear as one PC (Linux). He is currently prototyping and the proposed models are;

A. 144 cores / 360 GHz, 96 GB RAM = £20,000 approx.
Benchwell Target 60 secs!!

B. 288 cores / 720 GHz, 192 GB RAM = £40,000 approx.
Benchwell Target 30 secs!!

and he's also thinking of possibly a model below A. (approx. half this spec and price) and maybe one above B. (approx. triple this spec (864 cores!!) and price).

The whole thing would be put in one (largish) case, a bit bigger than a Mac Pro.

It's relatively early days but development is going a pace and we're trying to get a feel for potential markets.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated...

[bograt]

HOLY SHIT! only slightly bigger than a mac pro? you could probably use that to heat your house! ... not a bad idea actually.. workstation water cooling filling your hot water tank...
That Sound mental anyway, Would it be more of a render farm? or actually to sit below your desk?

[hatts]

I think we'd be curious about a machine like that. The potential lowest-end one (10k) strikes me as most intriguing.

In what way are the motherboards "merged?"

Just a word of caution that the price tag may not appeal to small viz/CGI studios. Adding individual machines to a farm is more gradually scaleable...adding a single box with hundreds of cores is more of a sudden leap, which isn't the way many studios make their tech purchases.

Seems like it could work for research/industrial/niche applications with a need for large volume data processing. Personally I could see our studio using something like that for 3D scan data processing and/or decimation.

[oz42]

bograt - yes, heat is going to be an issue but it is being dealt with and hopefully won't be too bad!

hats - I know what you mean about the scaleable part but we're hoping that the machines will be 'stackable' i.e. buy-in at the lower end and add to it. The mechanics of this are not fully ironed out but that's the idea. The motherboard 'merging' idea is under wraps at the mo but is very solid on paper. The research / industrial / niche markets are also in his sights but I also wanted to get feedback from the 3D community (as that is my particular cup of tea) thanks for your comments.

[Aniki]

very interested, actually. This might also give RealFlow a real boost;) What also counts is the single thread speed though..

[Mihai]

Is he aware of this though?
http://maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopi ... 19&t=38835

If you're spending this much you probably want to use it 24/7, any calculations of electricity costs added for a period of say 3 years?

[oz42]

Maxwell 2.7.1 now supports more than 64 threads! Could be useful! Thanks guys!

[numerobis]

Is this Intel or AMD based?!? Including Hyperthreading or without (i think with HT)

I think even if it is possible to store 144 cores in one box you don't want to have this one to be placed under your desk... How is it cooled? Watercooling with Radiator and pumps placed in a separated room?
Or Blade-like modules using low clocked (2,5GHz) processors with server cooling fans?

144 cores = 3x quad socket boards with 12core AMD Opterons?

But the linking idea sounds interesting... is this using Infiniband, normal LAN or something special?

[oz42]

AMD based, at the moment, with HT.

Yes, heat is definitely going to be an issue but he has systems in place and thinks it's under control.

Linking is under wraps at the moment (something special!) but more will be revealed once the prototype tests go successfully.