[Bioclusters] Any issues porting applications to OS X?

[Philip MacMenamin]

On Friday 05 March 2004 04:22 pm, you wrote:
> A *lot* more than anything we've been discussing so far.  That said,
> the Altix 350 looks very interesting, and list price is quite
> impressive, for an Itanium2 box.
>
> SGI always used to have an optimised version of BLAST for the Origin
> machines running IRIX, I'd be surprised if they haven't done the same
> for the Altix.
>
> Tim
Well...
If you take say a 16 node Altix 350 (I think thats the name of their new low 
end machine), and compare it to a comparable 16 node cluster using low 
latency interconnects, ie Myrinet, the Altix works out cheaper than the 
Myranet cluster. (Based on the numbers that we got) And it can run Linux. And 
is generally nicer. 

And, the Altix interconnects *annihilate* Myrinet. Like, an order of 
magnitude faster. So, if you want fast interconnects, Altix is your man. If 
you dont care, and want lots of grunty CPU action, a load of "cheap" CPUs 
with ethernet is fine, and of course is cheaper.  

Philip.