AMD-Powered Frontier Supercomputer Faces Difficulties, Can't Operate a Day without Issues

[Count von Schwalbe]

Did we ever hear from an intel/nvidia supercomputer that had startup issues?.... Not that I know...

Intel/Intel (Aurora):

The Intel supercomputer, which was repeatedly delayed and reworked, is now expected to be "comfortably over 2 exaflops" in peak compute performance, thanks to Intel's new GPUs performing better than expected.

Also, the "Summit" supercomputer uses IBM CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs, so ORNL would be having a fit if "Frontier" was much worse.

 

[Oberon]

AMD is the one providing the solution to the customer, doesn't matter who's switch is being used, AMD is taking the blame.

Tell me you have no experience outside of consumer hardware without telling me you have no experience outside of consumer hardware.

 

[mechtech]

I have build clusters, render farm and other types of super computers in one of my previous job.

Like they said, this is indeed expected. You have all kind of issue, bad cables, bad memory, etc. If you have 1% defect rate and you build a 1000 nodes system, that means 10 systems will have defect.

After that the fun start, try to find the source of the problem, trying to isolate it. It takes times and effort and the larger the cluster is, the harder it can be.

Render farm are most of the time easier since they just use the network and will crash by itself. A cluster have also the interconnect that can fail. You run codes on multiples nodes and it's not always clear where it fail. Sometime one node will crash because it received corrupted data from another nodes. Sometime it's the switch, the storage, etc. Way more parts to fail than a regular PC and trying to pin point a failure can sometime be really a pain in the ass and take days.


So to me, this article is more something to please the AMD bashing communities than anything else. I build both AMD/Intel systems and it's was not really much the CPU vendor that really effected defect rates. Larger cluster required more time to settle.

Must be a PITA troubleshooting and correcting that lol

 

[Oberon]

So to me, this article is more something to please the AMD bashing communities than anything else.

Lots of that going on here lately.

 

[R-T-B]

Sucks to be an early adopter on a multi 100s million dollar product

Sir that's always what you are on a multimillion dollar build. You think they poop these out daily?

Nothing burger:

Basically, yeah.

Lots of that going on here lately.

Clickbait gets clicks, sadly.

 

[r9]

Has to do with dual sided dimms

 

[Vayra86]

I have build clusters, render farm and other types of super computers in one of my previous job.

Like they said, this is indeed expected. You have all kind of issue, bad cables, bad memory, etc. If you have 1% defect rate and you build a 1000 nodes system, that means 10 systems will have defect.

After that the fun start, try to find the source of the problem, trying to isolate it. It takes times and effort and the larger the cluster is, the harder it can be.

Render farm are most of the time easier since they just use the network and will crash by itself. A cluster have also the interconnect that can fail. You run codes on multiples nodes and it's not always clear where it fail. Sometime one node will crash because it received corrupted data from another nodes. Sometime it's the switch, the storage, etc. Way more parts to fail than a regular PC and trying to pin point a failure can sometime be really a pain in the ass and take days.


So to me, this article is more something to please the AMD bashing communities than anything else. I build both AMD/Intel systems and it's was not really much the CPU vendor that really effected defect rates. Larger cluster required more time to settle.

Definition of CLICKBAIT

something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

You can use a white pitchfork for this one instead of a red one.

 

[r9]

From Can't Operate a Day without Issues" to
"We're dealing with a lot of the early-life kind of things we've seen with other machines that we've deployed, so it's nothing too out of the ordinary."
It doesn't get any more clickbait than that.

 

[thesmokingman]

Lmao, TPU added that trollish bit. That's really poor form man.

 

[r9]

Lmao, TPU added that trollish bit. That's really poor form man.

News title: "Politician caught wearing women's clothes in public"
Inside picture of Hilary Clinton.

 

[Space Lynx]

Sucks to be an early adopter on a multi 100s million dollar product

if you actually read the original article. it states these kind of obstacles are in the norm for something of this size.

this is just clickbait garbage. humans bore me. i guess i need to start drinking now

 

[N3utro]

Did they try to turn it off and on again?

 

[PapaTaipei]

All that compute power to spy EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.

 

[Mussels]

60 million parts...
Even a 0.001% chance of malfunction would mean 100% in this scale
There are always more than 1 component having malfunction in any given time of operation.

This.

Exascale, Exaproblems.

if you actually read the original article. it states these kind of obstacles are in the norm for something of this size.

this is just clickbait garbage. humans bore me. i guess i need to start drinking now

Well yeah, but it's also how you spot the people who lack the ability to think and leap on answers that fit an existing worldview

 

[AlwaysHope]

They cheaped out on the cables.. .suck it!

 

[R-T-B]

All that compute power to spy EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.

Is it conspiracy hour already?

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Is it conspiracy hour already?

#popcorn

 

[mkppo]

Terrible title..

The reality is that this is absolutely normal.

 

[Dirt Chip]

if you actually read the original article. it states these kind of obstacles are in the norm for something of this size.

this is just clickbait garbage. humans bore me. i guess i need to start drinking now

You are right- It is garbage, and the pull is not helping and should be killed.
But this is my escapism, so please don't judge me for worse

 

[bug]

Did we ever hear from an intel/nvidia supercomputer that had startup issues?.... Not that I know...

It's till not clear what kind of issues are we talking about here. If this is about the acceptance phase, yes, there will be issues galore, nothing to write home about. If it's post-acceptance issues, that could be a problem. We also don't know how much is hardware and how much is software related (it's possible this is what they're trying to figure out right now).

 

[HenrySomeone]

Not surprising, you always get what you pay for...

 

[ThomasK]

All of a sudden, lots of people here in the comment section seem to have a vast experience with supercomputers...

Gathered in another forum's comment section.

 

[thesmokingman]

All of a sudden, lots of people here in the comment section seem to have a vast experience with supercomputers...

Gathered in another forum's comment section.

Nah, click baity titles like this are troll and shill magne as Mussels alluded to. You can tell which is which.

 

[Mussels]

Nah, click baity titles like this are troll and shill magne as Mussels alluded to. You can tell which is which.

It's pretty funny.

It does explain some peoples purchasing and hardware/brand preferences, if they can't get past the headlines to actually read the content