University of Antwerp Makes 4k € Supercomputer with Four GeForce 9800 GX2 Cards


Have you ever thought that gaming parts like NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX video cards for instance, can be used for building a supercomputer. Maybe no, but researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have proven that it's possible to build one. Using four NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, AMD Phenom 9850 processor, 4x2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory and MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard, FASTRA costs less than 4000EUR to build and thanks to NVIDIA's CUDA technology and delivers roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs. This new system is used by the ASTRA research group, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, to develop new computational methods for tomography. Tomography is a technique used in medical scanners to create three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients, based on a large number of X-ray photos that are acquired over a range of angles. ASTRA develops new reconstruction techniques that lead to better reconstruction quality than classical methods.

You can read more about the FASTRA GPU SuperPC project over here.

that's the kind of innovation I like to see people making ...

Very nice - have a graphics application, throw graphics hardware at the problem.

I guess my question for now is: what IS a supercomputer? If I can walk off with it, it just doesn't seem all that super.

I have some old issues [mid 90s] of Supercomputing Review and they're asking the same question so it's not a new one. Their concern had to do more with TFlops and export restrictions.

Does the definition change? Do you need to be one of the 500 fastest on earth to be a supercomputer? I'm not unhappy with a shifting definition. 'World-class' in track and field is faster every year. 4 minutes for a mile [1609m] won't win you any money in Europe this summer; 50 years ago it was a world record - one guy had done it once.

I'm just askin...
-MF

supercomputer - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Gives this definition:

n. A mainframe computer that is among the largest, fastest, or most powerful of those available at a given time.


And Wikipedia ( Supercomputer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) gives this definition:

A supercomputer is a computer that is considered at the time of its introduction to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.

And Wiktionary ( supercomputer - Wiktionary ) gives this definition:

supercomputer (plural supercomputers)
(computing) Any computer that has a far greater processing power than others of its day; typically they use more than 1 core and are housed in large clean rooms with high air flow to permit cooling. Typical uses are weather forecasting, nuclear simulations and animations.

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n Typical uses are weather forecasting, nuclear simulations and animations.

Nice to see "graphics" ranks up there with weather forecasting and nuclear simulations ...