128-core AMD server

[jdart]

I bought one of these from Weird Stuff Warehouse, a Silicon Valley surplus store:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-202 ... 2507494792

It is actually 4 32-core nodes, each with its own OS and network. It boots CentOS, but I don't know the root password, so will have to reinstall the OS.

They still have one left, if anyone is interested.

--Jon

[Dann Corbit]

I bought one of these from Weird Stuff Warehouse, a Silicon Valley surplus store:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-202 ... 2507494792

It is actually 4 32-core nodes, each with its own OS and network. It boots CentOS, but I don't know the root password, so will have to reinstall the OS.

They still have one left, if anyone is interested.

--Jon

I guess that at full bore it is screaming loud like the machine that I bought (64 core). When the squirrel cage blowers hit full tilt, it sounds like a jet taking off on afterburners.

I am very happy with that purchase, but I did have to buy a sound proof box for it or it could not be run in the family room without chasing everyone out.

[jdart]

I am aware, I used to have a 1U server. It is in the family room while I set it up, but most of my computers are in the basement (aka data center) so that is probably its destination.

--Jon

[phhnguyen]

I bought one of these from Weird Stuff Warehouse, a Silicon Valley surplus store:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-202 ... 2507494792

It is actually 4 32-core nodes, each with its own OS and network. It boots CentOS, but I don't know the root password, so will have to reinstall the OS.

They still have one left, if anyone is interested.

--Jon

Wow, so good computer and so nice price!!!

I am interested on that kind of computer. However I won't buy this one at the moment since I have not enough knowledge to use.

Just few curious questions:

- Is it really one computer or two sticked together?
- Can I install Windows for that?
- Is it possible to add few more standard hard disks (ones for desktop computers)?
- Compare it with a desktop using one latest AMD cpu, say a Ryzen Threadripper 16 cores / 32 threads, which one is stronger for chess?

Thanks

[jdart]

I will try to answer but I am not yet an expert on this:

- Is it really one computer or two sticked together?
- appears to be 4 independent units with 2 power supplies between them.
- Can I install Windows for that?
- I think from the Supermicro site that this is basically certified only to run CentOS but it is likely other OSs would work. Can't guarantee though.
- Is it possible to add few more standard hard disks (ones for desktop computers)?
- It has a bunch of hot-swappable drive bays and as far as I can tell only one tier of those (out of three) is populated. So you can add disk but I am not not sure what types of disk it takes.
- Compare it with a desktop using one latest AMD cpu, say a Ryzen Threadripper 16 cores / 32 threads, which one is stronger for chess?
- This would not compete with a Threadripper, it has the older Opteron chips which had pretty poor performance on a per-core basis. The main advantage is that it has lots of cores.

[Dann Corbit]

I bought one of these from Weird Stuff Warehouse, a Silicon Valley surplus store:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-202 ... 2507494792

It is actually 4 32-core nodes, each with its own OS and network. It boots CentOS, but I don't know the root password, so will have to reinstall the OS.

They still have one left, if anyone is interested.

--Jon

Wow, so good computer and so nice price!!!

I am interested on that kind of computer. However I won't buy this one at the moment since I have not enough knowledge to use.

Just few curious questions:

- Is it really one computer or two sticked together?
- Can I install Windows for that?
- Is it possible to add few more standard hard disks (ones for desktop computers)?
- Compare it with a desktop using one latest AMD cpu, say a Ryzen Threadripper 16 cores / 32 threads, which one is stronger for chess?

Thanks

I have something very similar. I also have 64 cores and 128 GB RAM.

They are NUMA architecture. To use all the cores, the programs should be tuned for that. But all the programs that do well in TCEC should be examples to think of because that is NUMA also.

As far as Windows, you don't want Windows on a box like that. The license fees are absurd.

You can easily add thumb drives. With disk drives you can add them but they need to be SAS drives. Now the good news: SAS drives are twice as fast. Now the bad news: SAS drives cost twice as much

If you look at Ipman's site you will see that my machine is about the same speed as the high end threadripper. On the other hand, the threadripper machine costs many times what I paid. On the other hand, my machine is really noisy and uses electricity like it was going out of style.

So do what is best for you.

I put Ubuntu Linux on it. Ubuntu Linux is not hard to use.

[Dann Corbit]

I will try to answer but I am not yet an expert on this:

- Is it really one computer or two sticked together?
- appears to be 4 independent units with 2 power supplies between them.
- Can I install Windows for that?
- I think from the Supermicro site that this is basically certified only to run CentOS but it is likely other OSs would work. Can't guarantee though.
- Is it possible to add few more standard hard disks (ones for desktop computers)?
- It has a bunch of hot-swappable drive bays and as far as I can tell only one tier of those (out of three) is populated. So you can add disk but I am not not sure what types of disk it takes.
- Compare it with a desktop using one latest AMD cpu, say a Ryzen Threadripper 16 cores / 32 threads, which one is stronger for chess?
- This would not compete with a Threadripper, it has the older Opteron chips which had pretty poor performance on a per-core basis. The main advantage is that it has lots of cores.

From Ipman chess:
47.371.167 nps
4x AMD Opteron 6276 @2.3ghz
64threads
base
Dann Corbit

I think my machine is about like yours

43.214.379 NPS
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X @4.0Ghz
32threads
pop
Monstru
That is the high end threadripper

So a hair faster than top threadripper (Though the Epyc chips blow its doors off)

[phhnguyen]

Thank you all, I have a better understanding now.

Look like that kind of computer is out of my ability now. I love ones with a huge memory so I can use for generating Endgame databases but look like NUMA hardly allow me to alloc memory in large enough blocks (say 2 blocks of 40 GB from total 128 GB). Rewriting all code for NUMA may take me too much time and effort. Another task I wish to do with that computer is to test Xiangqi engines. Unfortunately almost all current released Xiangqi engines are only for Windows which is hard and expensive to install on that kind of computers. From their website none of them mentions to NUMA so I am not sure they support either.

Still curious:
- For a computer with 4 independent units as Jon Dart's description, is still counted as a NUMA one? Is there any high connection / bus between them?

[jdart]

I think it is basically 4 32 core computers in one chassis. So all 128 cores are not available for one process to use. Not a big deal for me, since I already have scripts to distribute the workloads I use across multiple machines. Anyway, it would be hard to use 128 cores concurrently for one process in an efficient manner (given memory contention, NUMA issues and other factors).

--Jon

[Dann Corbit]

Thank you all, I have a better understanding now.

Look like that kind of computer is out of my ability now. I love ones with a huge memory so I can use for generating Endgame databases but look like NUMA hardly allow me to alloc memory in large enough blocks (say 2 blocks of 40 GB from total 128 GB). Rewriting all code for NUMA may take me too much time and effort. Another task I wish to do with that computer is to test Xiangqi engines. Unfortunately almost all current released Xiangqi engines are only for Windows which is hard and expensive to install on that kind of computers. From their website none of them mentions to NUMA so I am not sure they support either.

Still curious:
- For a computer with 4 independent units as Jon Dart's description, is still counted as a NUMA one? Is there any high connection / bus between them?

Numa does not prevent allocation of large blocks of memory

If the cores are not all on the same chip, you can be sure it is NUMA.
There are even single chip computers that are NUMA (like the Epyc ones)

If the Xianqui engines come with source code you can just compile them