The $100 supercomputer: Your dream come true is a click away
86 replies, posted
Of course, at the time of this post it's price was $100 with one bid. I wonder what it will end at?
Normally I'm not assed to even post something like this because it flexes the rules but this is one of the very few times where it's actually possible to exceed me in total dork factor.
Ladies and gentlemen, for those [del]foolish[/del] crazy enough to own a supercomputer so powerful it puts everything I have to shame, I give you one of the fruits of ebay: The $100 Origin 3400.
[img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-001.jpg[/img][img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-005.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-009.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-003.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-002.jpg[/img]
[url=http://cgi.ebay.com/SGI-Origin-3400-Rack-w-R-R-I-C-Brick-StorageTek-9730-/390290249160?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5adf1c95c8#ht_4009wt_907]Click me to see that actual listing.[/url]
In terms of age, this cimputer is now ten years old. It was one of SGI's last MIPS-based supercomputers and was fully discontinued in 2005 when the company went into financial damage control over their Itanium disaster and invasion of the x86 servers which eventually killed the company. Even without the presence of it's InfiniteReality3/4 graphics brick, this system is still powerful for a single rack configuration. There is still a lot of supported software available for it as well too. Folding@Home though, is not one of them.
It's too far away for me to even dare going after and shipping is freight-only. Are you daring enough to go for it?
I promise you, you can use it to upgrade your house from a gas heated home to an electrically heated home. You will never have to turn the furnace on again.
Sorry for the dumb post... but what can it do? What is it used for?
That design :suicide:
Were they doing LSD while coming up with it?
[QUOTE=MIPS;28203470]I promise you, you can use it to upgrade your house from a gas heated home to an electrically heated home. You will never have to turn the furnace on again.[/QUOTE]
I've already own a Intel P4 Prescott, so I think my ass is covered there.
Is that a door in the background?
Holy shit, it goes up to your waist at best. I'm just wondering though, how the fuck do you interface with it? It looks like there's a mini-floppy cramed in there somewhere.
[editline]21st February 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=MIPS;28203470]You will never have to turn the furnace on again.[/QUOTE]
Well it seems that mother nature turned off californias furnace, so that would be quite useful.
A supercomputer running MIPS? Isn't that what junky routers run these days?
Looks more like a workstation to me than it does a supercomputer.
Seriously, uh... What the hell is this thing capable of?
The pictures of this thing are misleading about the size. I'd really like to know what kind of hardware is in it to get an idea of what it can do.
[QUOTE=Errorproxy;28204572]Holy shit: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_3000_and_Onyx_3000[/url][/QUOTE]
[quote=Wikipedia]
[b]Origin 3900 CPUs: 4 to 512 MEM: 1 GB to 1 TB [/b]
[/quote]
:aaaaa:
Size is misleading - probably around this size:
[img]http://1userverrack.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ibm-rack.jpg[/img]
[editline]22nd February 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=jjsullivan;28204808]:aaaaa:[/QUOTE]
Wrong model - its the 3400.
[QUOTE=jjsullivan;28204808]:aaaaa:[/QUOTE]
Mind you its only the 3400 so you only get
Origin 3400 CPUs: 4 to 32 MEM: 512 MB to 16 GB, although 1TB of memory would be fucking nuts.
[editline]42[/editline]
:ninja:
[QUOTE=Funny;28204908]Size is misleading - probably around this size:
[img_thumb]http://1userverrack.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ibm-rack.jpg[/img_thumb]
[editline]22nd February 2011[/editline]
Wrong model - its the 3400.[/QUOTE]
Still pretty cool considering.
[img]http://www.ciesurplus.com/images/_items/V00292933432000010131-005.jpg[/img]
[img]http://cl.ly/120G1f1b1A1d2H0D3y2G/content[/img]
Dat CD drive
How much is shipping?
Yep. It's a full-size rack.
Interface is through either ethernet or serial interfaces with a CD drive for loading the OS as well as additional software. With the G-brick you obviously get the advantage of being able to use a desktop to do stuff but you can also do a remote X console albeit sans local graphics acceleration.
What exactly is it capable of? I'm not exactly sure. These systems were designed mainly for extreme computing (the design of the system contains the DNA of Cray who was purchased by SGI years earlier) so probably stuff like cryptography, genome analysis, number crunching, VERY large databases, and simulation. Nowhere in their specs was there anything about games.
That'd make a boss HTPC
I'd be interested to see if my school, or anyone else's for that matter, would consider bidding $100 for the thing "for educational purposes". I'm kind of sick of screwing around with the old Dell PowerEdge in the back of the room.
Obligatory "But can it run Crysis?"
[QUOTE=KillerTele;28205208]Obligatory "But can it run Crysis?"[/QUOTE]
and then the crickets arrived
By god. It's gorgeous :swoon:
[QUOTE=KillerTele;28205208]Obligatory "But can it run Crysis?"[/QUOTE]
It can run 10 Cryses
So long as it maintains that proficiency in cryptography, I believe I can put it to good usage.
I'd buy it for many reasons.
The shipping is gone cost you more then the Computer is Worth.
I don't think you can actually game on a supercomputer... But then what do I know. I'm sure someone will put it to better use, like hacking into the government or something. Wait a second, this isn't a supercomputer, it's a server. Misleading.
[QUOTE=ColdFusion;28206896]The shipping is gone cost you more then the Computer is Worth.[/QUOTE]
The question is: can the computer calculate its own shipping costs ?
Wish I had $100 to burn.
What are you going to do with that massive computer?
[QUOTE=Osku1234;28207871]What are you going to do with that massive computer?[/QUOTE]
sell it as scrap metal and get 200$
It isn't that good, it only has one computing module in it. Your mid-high end graphics card is probably more powerful than the single C-Brick it has in there.
What kind of OS could you run on it?
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