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posted by janrinok on Saturday May 11 2024, @01:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the old-space-heater dept.

Someone purchased the eight year old Cheyenne supercomputer for $480k. Failing hardware. Leaking water system. What would it be good for? Selling for parts would flood the market. Testing the parts would take forever. They also have to pay for transport from it's current location. Originally built by SGI.

https://gsaauctions.gov/auctions/preview/282996
https://www.popsci.com/technology/for-sale-government-supercomputer-heavily-used/
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/supercomputers/multi-million-dollar-cheyenne-supercomputer-auction-ends-with-480085-bid

Cheyenne Supercomputer - Water Cooling System

Components of the Cheyenne Supercomputer

Installed Configuration: SGI ICEā„¢ XA.

E-Cells: 14 units weighing 1500 lbs. each.

E-Racks: 28 units, all water-cooled

Nodes: 4,032 dual socket units configured as quad-node blades

Processors: 8,064 units of E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)

Total Cores: 145,152

Memory: DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank, 64 GB per node, with 3 High Memory E-Cells having 128GB per node, totaling 313,344 GB

Topology: EDR Enhanced Hypercube

IB Switches: 224 units

Moving this system necessitates the engagement of a professional moving company. Please note the four (4) attached documents detailing the facility requirements and specifications will be provided. Due to their considerable weight, the racks require experienced movers equipped with proper Professional Protection Equipment (PPE) to ensure safe handling. The purchaser assumes responsibility for transferring the racks from the facility onto trucks using their equipment.

Please note that fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are excluded from the resale package.

The internal DAC cables within each cell, although removed, will be meticulously labeled, and packaged in boxes, facilitating potential future reinstallation.

Any ideas (serious or otherwise) of suitable uses for this hardware?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday May 11 2024, @09:59AM

    by looorg (578) on Saturday May 11 2024, @09:59AM (#1356536)

    Unless these people need a supercomputer, *NOW*, and can't wait the waiting-list period to have something built for them, and probably plan to resell it in under 4 years -- it's not financially sound to purchase this supercomputer.

    No doubt it would be cheaper to just build a new one with new hardware. But it might not be an option. Are there over the counter supercomputers in some regard? The waiting list for getting one more be years long. There appear to be a limited set of companies that build them these days. They might just not have the amount of modules and components just sitting and waiting to be used. So perhaps this is the reason, get one pre-owned and run it for a few years while you are on the list to get something new?

    Perhaps it's a customer close to Wyoming? Less transport, similar or cheap(er) powercosts? You probably don't want to move a thing like this out to one of the more expensive power areas.

    Energy is as noted probably one of the big costs in the long term, the other one is probably people to run it. You need some people with knowledge and skills to do so, they probably are not entirely insignificant in cost per year either.

    Or perhaps it's just not supposed to make sense. As someone else here noted perhaps some Cryptobro just bought it for the lulz so they can say they own a supercomputer now. Worlds biggest and most pointless piece of furniture ...

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