[rescue] SGI files Ch11 again, bought by Rackable for $25M

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:27:32AM -0600, jodys at helluin.org wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:18:17AM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
> > HIPPI was the world's first gigabit networking system.  Friends of mine
> > worked with SGI to develop it, got an R&D 100 award out of the deal etc.
> > Major breakthrough at the time (late 1990s I guess, before my time there).
> > When I came on, I was mostly handling software and OS stuff so I didn't have
> > my hands inside the machines too often.  I do remember seeing the thick
> > cables though and having to work around them.  One "router rack" with 4
> > O2000 racks on each side with the heavy HIPPI cable interconnects.  So 9
> > racks total per row, times 48 rows deep.   LOTS of cable.
> > 
> > Later we experimented with the Origin 3200 line, testing R bricks (routers
> > for the ccNUMA interconnects) vs Myranet and such.   Good times.
> 
> Wow! Origin 2000 was 16 CPU per rack, so 9 racks times 16 is 144, 144
> cpus times 48 rows is 6912 cpus. No wonder they used HIPPI, I believe that
> Origin 2000, with the last routers, maxed out at 512 cpus. 

Only 8 racks of CPUs.  The 9th rack was the meta-router.