Sep 29 2009
Geek Porn
All geeks drool over various bits of kit and, knowing full well they are totally impractical for their own particular circumstances, still wish it was theirs.
Here are a couple of my recent geek porn moments. Yes, I fully understand that they’re completely impractical for my requirements. I also understand that they’d be wasted in any role I could find for them. But, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re seriously cool bits of kit and if someone wanted to give me one I wouldn’t turn them down.
First up, how about a super computer in your own home (or office)? Enter the Silicon Graphics Octane III. Look a bit blade-like? Yep, it is. Chunky? Apparently dimensions are roughly 1ft x 2ft x 2ft so, yes, a little bit. But check the specs:
- Up to 20 Xeon Quad Core Processors
- Up to 960GB (yes, that’s a G) of Memory
- Up to 10 SATA hard drives
- Graphics with your choice of NVIDIA® Quadro® FX1800, FX3800, FX4800, FX5800. NVIDIA® TeslaTM C1060
- Up to 4 1000W power supplies
…and yes, it’ll run Vista and Windows 7.
In reality it looks to be set for three distinct roles with each role having different capabilities based on the way the slots are used – as a “deskside cluster” based around either Xeon or Atom processors and as a “graphics workstation” with fewer CPU cores but having graphics capabilities and other features. I couldn’t see any mention of pricing but I’d hazard a guess this is in the category of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.
For my second item of drool today, here’s a nice little number in red. Stuff-all processing power but if you really need some storage for your warez and torrent downloads, this might just suit your requirements:
Yep, serious drive storage and what is apparently a not so serious price. It’s a full 4RU rack case storage unit designed to be stacked in a standard 19″ rack and provide OMG levels of storage space. What’s really great in this case is that the guys who created it (BackBlaze) have released a complete how-to as open source hardware. They include parts lists and instructions on how to put it all together.
What have they done? Basically, they put a relatively standard computer (motherboard, cpu, etc) in a case together with up to fourty five 1.5TB hard drives and some software to tie it all together. Seriously nice bit of kit, and, IT’S RED!!!
