Penguin Hatches Bare-Bones Altus Opteron Server

Published: January 16, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last fall, server and clustering software provider Penguin Computing was hinting that it had a low-cost Linux server in the works specifically for budget-conscious supercomputing customers, and now that Opteron-based machine, the Altus 600, is available. Because of its lean design and low cost, the Altus 600 is bound to be attractive to HPC customers--and is also bound to be imitated by other server suppliers in relatively short order.

The Altus line of machines at Penguin Computing is based on various processors from Advanced Micro Devices, while the Relion product line is based on various X64 processors from Intel. The Altus product line is a bit more broad, with six different models, while the Relion line only has three different models, spanning from an entry 1U Pentium D server (the Relion 102) to two-socket boxes based on the latest dual-core "Woodcrest" Xeon 5100 and quad-core "Clovertown" Xeon 5300 that come in 1U or 3U form factors (that would be the Relion 1600s and 2600s).

According to Pauline Nist, senior vice president of product development and management at Penguin Computing, the Altus 600 takes the idea of a minimalist server aimed directly at HPC shops that are big on floating point performance and stingy when it comes to money to the extreme that these customers are demanding. The Altus 600 is based on AMD's new dual-core Rev F Opteron 2000s, which launched last summer. It has a two-socket motherboard that has up to 64 GB of main memory in 16 slots, up to two SATA disk drives, and a single PCI-Express x16 slot. (The machine supports 667 MHz DDR2 main memory modules.) The motherboard is based on nVidia's nForce Professional 3600 MCP chipset. The machine comes with a single 450 watt power supply.

According to Nist, both the standard and HE Opteron 2000 processors--the latter runs at a lower voltage and delivers the same performance, clock for clock, as the regular Opteron parts--are supported in the Altus product line. Not too many companies and institutions that are installing clusters in the 64-node to 256-node sweet spot that Penguin Computing serves are using the Opteron HEs, but there are some. "There are enough sales of Opteron HE chips to notice, but it is not an extraordinary amount," says Nist. The main indicator of who uses Opteron HEs is the proximity to an urban area where electricity is expensive and space is at a premium. "People tend to be more sensitive to power and cooling depending on where they are in the world," she says.

The Altus 600 has considerably more main memory than the Altus 1600, a two-socket 1U server that tops out at 24 GB of main memory because it has up to four SATA disks and two PCI-Express slots. With the Altus 600, Penguin Computing is trimming down the expansion in the box and beefing up the memory. The Altus 1600, by comparison, is a more general-purpose computer, with more peripheral expansion even through it is in the same 1U form factor as the Altus 600. The Altus 1600 is based on the nVidia MCP55 chipset, and can be equipped with SATA, SCSI, or SAS disks. The machine has an optional RAID mezzanine card and battery backup for the on-board disk controller, and comes with two PCI-Express slots: one PCI-Express x16 slot and one x8 low-profile slot. If customers want a PCI-X slot of an older peripheral card, they can swap out the x8 slot for a PCI-X slot. The Altus 1600 comes with a 600 watt power supply, and supports the same range of Opteron 2000 processors as the Altus 600, including HE variants.

The Altus 600 is quite a bit cheaper, too. A base Altus 1600 with a power supply, a single Opteron 2210 running at 1.8 GHz, 1 GB of main memory, a 160 GB disk, Fedora Core 5 preloaded, and a three-year hardware warranty costs $1,753. A base Altus 600 with the same configuration (except it comes with Fedora Core 6 preinstalled) costs $1,321. While $432 doesn't sound like much, with the typical Linux cluster that Penguin Computing sells having between 64 and 256 nodes, this can add up to $27,648 to $110,592 in savings. That is enough savings to buy another 20 to 80 compute nodes--or actually pay for tech support and other services for the machines. Or, another way to look at it is that the savings that would have been spent on extraneous electronics can now be used to buy faster processors or fatter main memory.

Of course, no one buys a base server in a supercomputing cluster. Assuming that heat is no obstacle but pricing is an issue, then the most probably Rev F Opteron for HPC shops to buy is the Opteron 2218, which runs at 2.6 GHz. Jumping up to the 2.8 GHz Rev part can double the price of the processor, and that extra 200 of performance is probably not worth the dough--not when you can get a second processor for the same money and do another whole processor's worth of work. With two Opteron 2218s, 32 GB of memory, two disks, Fedora Core 6, and the three-year warranty, the Altus 600 costs $5,873. With the same processor, memory, and disk configurations, the Altus 1600 costs $6,325--a difference of $452. The pricing disparity between the two kinds of 1U server nodes holds even for configured machines. And, for those HPC customers who really want to jack up the main memory in the box, Penguin Computer can probably hit a $10,000 price point for a 1U server--which is something of a feat. But, certain kinds of supercomputer workloads like that extra memory, which just hasn't been available in such a cramped box until now.

Customers who want to use the dual-core Woodcrest and quad-core Clovertown chips in the Relion product line from Penguin can do so, and they will see better performance--thanks to the quasi quad core Clovertown--than the AMD Opteron 2000s can deliver. But the Intel-based servers top out at 32 GB of main memory. And, perhaps more significantly, the Woodcrest and Clovertown boxes are more expensive because of the need to use 4 GB DIMMs to hit that 32 GB maximum memory. A Relion 1600 server with two 2.6 GHz Woodcrest chips, 16 GB of main memory (four DIMMs), and two 160 GB SATA disks with the same Fedora software and support costs $10,839 at Penguin Computing. If a customer wants to drop down to 2 GB DIMMs, the price drops down to $6,839, but that machine then has no more memory slots open for further expansion. No matter what, the Altus 600 is just plain cheaper than the Woodcrest alternative, and it still has room for memory expansion.

More importantly, perhaps, the Altus 600 is a lot cheaper than RISC/Unix boxes. "People have stopped buying Unix," says Nist. "The shift to Linux has happened, and it is most obvious in the commercial HPC market--big pharma, oil and gas exploration, and so on. These Unix customers are used to paying a lot more for cycles, and with the Opterons and new Xeons, they can now get a lot of cycles for a lot less money. And the race between Intel and AMD is only helping lower the price."

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