TIL that all of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers run on Linux.
TIL that all of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers run on Linux.
en.wikipedia.org
Linux kernel - Wikipedia
81 comments
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I think one day old accounts should be banned in TIL... It's clearly a karma farmer who is reposting stuff they know we like to hear.
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Its why lemmy only shows posts and comments and not karma unlike Piefed. Karma is irrelevant when it can be easily botted and farmed now.
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I think they do this to make accounts look legit when they are astroturfing later.
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sorry to burst your bubble
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Wait it’s all Linux? 🔫 Always has been…
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I once worked on a supercomputer in the olden times - this was before Linux. You basically wrote your calculation application on a front-end system with a cross-compiler. It was then transferred to the target machines' RAM and ran there. Your application was the only thing running on that machine. No OS, no drivers, no interrupts (at least not that I knew of). Just your application directly on the hardware. Once your program was finished, the RAM was read back, and you could analyze the dump to extract your results.
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OG
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did you think they ran windows server?
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I think a more likely alternative with be a BSD or other Unix derivative
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no link to supercomputer list
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They don't actually list OS there, but you can assume it's Linux. Lots of R&D has been done to get Linux to run well on supercomputers, it'd be cost prohibitive to try some other OS.
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Some of the clusters I use are on the list and I can confirm that those all run Linux.
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Long time now. Linux runs almost on every device, not just computers and phones.
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I think they are surprised that there aren't any other bespoke or legacy or somewhat exotic OSes being used for any of them. Or maybe BSD or something.
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The hardware is generally more mundane on that front, and even the 'exotic' ones are most readily accommodated by Linux (almost all x86 based, with a handful of POWER, ARM, and one that is allegedly DEC Alpha derived).
Generally speaking, a Top500 is a bunch of x86 servers usually nowadays with some GPUs in them connected by ethernet or infiniband.
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Wow, you learnt that today RandomGS310 did you? The joy that must have given you that you immediately created an account and this was your first and only post? Good for you my totally authentic friend.
If we could all just break character for a sec... I've been meaning to ask you Linux lovers a question for a while. Why is it so important to you that everyone starts using Linux? It just seems like you all put so much effort into trying to convert/coerce/shame people into using Linux and I've just never understood why?
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The more people that use it, the more companies and individuals see that it’s a viable alternative to Windows. It’s not that we are actively affected by others using Windows, we just know how much better it is on the other side with an OS that isn’t trying to be hostile. You already know all the talking points. We just want others to stop complaining daily about how awful computers are and instead see that they don’t have to be.
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I get it. You're basically lovable hippies who found a cool thing and can't imagine why anyone would want to use something less good (in their view). Best answer to my question so far thanks :)
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Because the alternatives are just bad for everyone. It's not just that I don't like the software, Microsoft is an awful company all around that deserves no one's business. Apple isn't that much better either.
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im fond of linux, i also understand that most people aren’t programmers and find it daunting.
i want people to be able to use it, and im really happy when it gets mainstream support, like with SteamOS.
as to why with that? because windows spies on you, is full of viruses, and participates in monopolistic practices… having a corporation control every aspect of your operating system is a bad idea for like, society and humanity…. -
You ever see someone whose clearly abused by their spouse/parent/whatever and you're like "you gotta get away from them"...but they're like "no it's okay I need this, and it's not that bad, most of the bruises are under my shirt".
It's sorta like that.
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Linux users are like vegans. 90% percent of Linux users (or vegans) are perfectly fine with whatever you use (or eat). It's only the small 10% who are very vocal and cast a negative light on the entire community.
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To the extent it would be nice if the userbase is broader and applications I want to use have to accept that they cater to Linux users.
To some extent it's nice to share what you appreciate.
Another facet is when someone complains for the 100th time about Microsoft making yet another move against their own users it feels weird that they just keep with it.
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It is said, that once you install windows on them, you would finally be able to use Internet Explorer!
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Well they're not gonna use Windows
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No *BSD?
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BSD is dated at this point. It is still being maintained but not nearly as much.
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Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
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You sure that there are penguins in Scandinavia?
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Linux is the liberator.
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Well shit now I want to know if quantum computers have operating systems..
And it looks like as of earlier this year the answer to that.. is yes. Special ones. Well, special one so far.
Quantum internet seems like a really bad idea, though, if the regular internet is any indication..
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It's not exactly the quantum computers having an OS. Like with supercomputers back in my time, there are more or less normal computers running a more or less normal OS, which has the computational engine as a kind of device. You create and compile your "application" on that host processor, and load the "binary" onto the quantum device and execute it.
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I’m more relieved than surprised by this.
81 comments
If you look at it logically, it only makes sense.
With these Supercomputers, you often run on very specialized Hardware which you have to write costum kernels and drivers for, and if you arent willing to spend millions to get Microsoft to support it, your only other Option is Linux really
Not really, we are not in the eighties anymore, modern supercomputers are mainly a bunch of off the shelf servers connected together
They still probably need a ton of customization and tuning at the driver level and beyond, which open source allows for.
I am sure there is plenty of existing "super computer"-grade software in the wild already, but a majority of it probably needs quite a bit of hacking to get running smoothly on newer hardware configurations.
As a matter of speculation, the engineers and scientists that build these things are probably hyper-picky about how some processes execute and need extreme flexibility.
So, I would say it's a combination of factors that make Linux a good choice.
So is it just hundreds of servers, each running their own OS and coordinating on tasks?
I mean, what the first person said is true...
... and what you have just said is true.
There is no tension between these concepts.
Nearly all servers run on linux, nearly all supercomputers are some kind of locally networked cluster... that run linux.
Theres... theres no conflict here.
In fact, this kind of multi computer paradigm for Linux is the core of why X11 is weird and fucky, in the context of a modern, self contained PC, and why Wayland is a thing nowadays.
X11 is built around a paradigm where you have a whole bunch of hardware units doing actual calcs of some kind, and then, some teeny tiny hardware that is basically just a display and input device... well thats the only thing that even needs to load a display or input related code/software/library.
You also don't really need to worry so much about security in the display/input framework itself, because your only potential threat is basically a rogue employee at your lab, and everyone working there is some kind of trained expert.
This makes sense if your scenario is a self contained computer research facility that is only networked to what is in its building...
... it makes less sense and has massive security problems if you have a single machine that can do all of that, and that single machine is also networked to millions of remote devices (via the modern internet), and in a world where computer viruses, malware, are a multi billion dollar industry... and the average computer user is roughly as intelligent and knowledgeable as a 6th grader.
Soooo many raspberry pis...
Nah it's to avoid the forced windows reboots /j
I managed a research cluster for a university for about 10 years. The hardware was largely commodity and not specialized. Unless you call nVidia GPU’s or InfiniBand “specialized”. Linux was the obvious choice because many cluster-aware applications, both open source and commercial, run on Linux.
We even went so far as to integrate the cluster with CERN’s ATLAS grid to share data and compute power for analyzing ATLAS data from the LHC. Virtually all the other grid clusters ran Linux, so that made it much easier to add our cluster to its distributed environment.
The competition wasn't between Linux and Windows, but rather Linux with some dedicated server OSes like Solaris, HP-UX and whatnot — mostly variants of Unix, but idk which ones exactly.
And for those, it's pretty clear. Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, AIX... They all were proprietary offerings that strove to lock in users to a specific hardware stack with very high prices.
Linux opened up the competitive field to a much broader set of business concerns, making performance per dollar much more attractive. Also the open source having a great deal of appeal for some of the academic market, a huge participant in the HPC community.
Sad BSD noises.
It runs on the same hardware you and me could buy if we weren’t poor. And no, people don’t write their own kernels or drivers because your vendors will tell you that you can use their supported version or get fucked when something breaks. Yes there’s some optimizations for like enterprise hardware but everyone will half a brain cell can and should tweak the system at that price point. Idk you don’t sound like someone who knows a thing about HPC. Sorry.