Computer of the week...

[AJ@PR]

Please Stand By...

Definitely.

I hadn't written anything here... but, man...

This thread is great!
Very cool hardware.

Hey, can anyone upload pics of server rooms?
All I have is the CDW advertisements.... where the dude is standing in front of a wall of rackmounts. Server-room pics make me drool.

I'm sorry, either upload pics, or (easier), provide a link.

Airbozo,
Thanks for the updates.
Rock on!!!

AJ

[nil8]

Find a server farm and see if they've give you a tour. Some will, some won't. Most geeks understand the drool factor when it comes to server rooms. It's really impressive. I worked in a hospital with one that was sweet. Over 90 servers.

Whenever you get a chance Airbozo, we understand. Holidays and all. Congrats on your wife too.

[AKA_RA]

i believe i started salivating at the simple mention of a server farm. lol.

[Airbozo]

Ok, Sorry for the absence in this thread, work and home have been busy. Guess that is good at work so I still have a job and busy at home mean I am getting some things done and modding/improving my house.

I finally got a chance to take a few pictures of an sgi origin 300. (very similar to this 350: http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/.../overview.html )
Only 73 gb scsi drive going into this system with 2 gb of memory, and 4x600mhz procs.
These systems are based on a mips chip like the older sgi systems. If I remember right this is the last model that has the mips chip. Sgi has dropped the mips chip in favor if the Intel Itanium. The Altix line from sgi features this chip running linux. I will get to that system in the next few weeks.

Any way on to this pics,

Here is a shot of the front of the system with the drives pulled out (one drive, one slot filler needed for proper airflow);

The display is part of the L1 controller that allows you to do some pretty complex diagnostics and information retrieval over a serial port without actually powering up the system. It also allows you to power up the system and can also act as the console. The L1 Controller i running a mini version of linux on a chip.

This is the back of the system. You can see the I/O card on the right. this is what makes this system a "Master" unit. Without this card, all you can do is hook it up to another master Via the ports on the far left, called a numalink (they may have changed that name). The I/O card has 2 serial ports, a console port (also allows you to access the L1), trigger ports (between the console and serial), 2 usb ports, a network port and that port to the left of the network jack is a direct connect to the L1.

Here is a shot of the innards. Memory on the top left, bottom left is a top view of the I/O card, The 4 smaller black heatsinks are the processors, the one between the 2 procs is the memory interface controller (plus some other stuff), the heatsink on the far laft is the crossbow chip. This is what allows the system to communicate across the 2 numalinks so fast. You can see several power regulators also on the board. The power supply is on the bottom right.

This is a shot of the memory module. I should have put a regular ddr2 next to it so you can see how big it is. It is only 512mb ecc (dual ecc or something like that), buffered.

Let me know if you want a different shot.

[AJ@PR]

If it isn't too much to ask, more pics!

I find it interesting that 'for proper airflow' you need to instal drives/slot fillers.

That L1 Controller thing also sounds interesting.

What would the benefit be of running one Master with various non-Master (slaves?) ones hooked up to it?
Better performance?

The amazing-ness of sgi...

[Airbozo]

I will get some more shots tomorrow...

The slot filler just keeps the air circulating around the drive bay instead of just rushing through the empty slot (path of least resistance).

The L1 is fun to play with and you can hook up 16 (or more) of the nodes to act as one system and all the L1's are then controlled by an L2 (a larger computer running an embedded version of linux) across the numalink. And communicate via a router, that controls the data flow on the numalink.

The operating system as well as all your applications would see _one_ system with 64 processors and the total sum of all the memory in all nodes (I think the max is 4 gb per node x16). The hardware along with software hooks, make sure that the data that the local cpu is working with stays in local memory and not in memory several links away, although the local cpu would have access to data in remote nodes.

couple of things I forgot to mention; You can have several "slaves" that also have I/O panels in them and that I/O panel would be usable by any node. Also each L1 would have it's own "address", usualy defined by the rack number and position in that rack. For example, an L1 address of 001c14, would indicate rack 001, position 14 (counted in 1u slots from the bottom of the rack). The c indicates it is a compute node, an r would indicate a router node and a p would indicate a pci brick, with 4 busses and 12 slots, g graphics node (there are a few more).

[Airbozo]

Whew! long time since new systems. Shame on me!

These are some pictures of the inside of a dell inspiron 690. A customer of ours uses these for workstations used by a Dr. to plan laser surgery. Pretty cool stuff, but I have never seen the software that runs on it. I am hoping to see a demo soon. They use the Wacom Cintiq display for the interface and display.

http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/index.cfm

Here is a shot of the inside. Top left, external drive bays, 2x5 1/4, 2x3 1/2. Top right, power supply. Its a big beast and takes a huge cord. Just below the power supply are the 4 drive bays. SAS drives or SATA. Both controllers are on the mobo, just need to switch the cables. Middle is the video card. Also a beast. Bottom left, processors, bottom right, memory;

Here is a closer shot of the video card. It's an nVidia quadro 4550. Notice the board extender and metal bracket to give it support and make it long enough to be supported by the end slot. Also notice the middle blue plastic support bracket;

Here is a shot of the airflow plastics removed from the processor and memory. Huge fan on the left and another on the right(a 120mm);

Here are the memory riser's. The plug directly into the onboard memory slots and provide for quad channel memory access. There are 2 of them in each machine with 16 slots each. We only configure the system with 8 gb of memory;

Here is a closer shot. Notice the heat spreaders on the memory and how the whole assembly plugs into 2 memory slots;

That's all for now. Hopefully it won't be 3 months before the next post.

[Zephik]

You have the best job in the world. nuf said.

lol

[Spawn-Inc]

Here are the memory riser's. The plug directly into the onboard memory slots and provide for quad channel memory access. There are 2 of them in each machine with 16 slots each. We only configure the system with 8 gb of memory;

Here is a closer shot. Notice the heat spreaders on the memory and how the whole assembly plugs into 2 memory slots;

That's all for now. Hopefully it won't be 3 months before the next post.

can this be put in any old system?!? and is there an ddr one available too? also does anyone know what would happen if i made a board like that but instead of having all those resistors and caps if i just connected it straight to the ram only. i mean like this


the blue lines are suspose to represent the 240 pins all being connected. would the computer work or think it has (lets say you put a 1gb stick in each slot) 8gbs in the 1 slot?

[Airbozo]

After checking with some friends, I would have to say that not just any riser card would work. It must contain some filtering circuitry and some logic to deal with timing issues. I just tried to use a SUN memory riser in a generic server board I have here and just got the memory error beeps. Checked everything out and I did not burn anything up in the process since the system still boots and see all the memory.