IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

JimD declared on Thursday 24 February 2005 10:58 pm: Despite what the seller claims, it's definately too slow to be on the top500 list. When I looked into it, I found out it was last on the list in June of 2002, and wasn't very high up (low 300s). The machine is (or was, with all of the frames, which the seller doesn't seem to have in the auction listing) only 512 processors of 120/135MHz processors. They're not horribly slow, but definately not computationally worthwhile. The ~900 processors of IBM SP (375MHz POWER3) we have at work (well, we've got 320 now, soon to add another 576) won't even make it onto the TOP500 list this next time around I'm pretty sure. As far as memory and disk space go, you'll probably be using up a good chunk of the disk space per node for OS and software; and the memory is evenly distributed between all the nodes. Having a large amount of contiguous memory and disk (like what you can with an IBM p690) is much more interesting from an HPC standpoint. :) One rack of the SP system would be sort of cool to have, but having that many frames just doesn't make any sense no matter how I try to look at it. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org