Crazy cool GPGPU rig

[interman]

Researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have created a new supercomputer with standard gaming hardware. The system uses four NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, it costs less than 4000EUR to build and thanks to NVIDIA's CUDA technology it delivers roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs!

This new system is used by the ASTRA research group, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, to develop new computational methods for tomography. The guys explain the eight NVIDIA GPUs deliver the same performance for their work as more than 300 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processors. On a normal desktop PC their tomography tasks would take several weeks but on this NVIDIA-based supercomputer it only takes a couple of hours. The NVIDIA graphics cards do the job very efficiently and consume a lot less power than a supercomputer cluster.

The research group ASTRA, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, focuses on the development of new computational methods for tomography. Tomography is a technique used in medical scanners to create three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients, based on a large number of X-ray photos that are acquired over a range of angles. ASTRA develops new reconstruction techniques that lead to better reconstruction quality than classical methods.

Although our reconstruction techniques are very powerful, they have an important drawback: they are quite slow. As the 3D images that we normally deal with can be rather large (typically 1024x1024x1024 volume elements, or more), advanced reconstruction methods can sometimes take weeks of computation time on a normal PC. Here's a look at the specifications of the FASTRA desktop superPC. The main reason why they configured an AMD system is because they couldn't find a motherboard for the Intel platform that could fit four GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards. Another interesting note is that this system doesn't need SLI, their application uses the NVIDIA CUDA programming model which makes all eight GPUs work in parallel. The researchers say they don't need SLI during a reconstruction as every graphics card communicates directly with the CPU, no inter-GPU communication is needed.

# AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
# 4x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
# 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
# MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
# Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
# ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
# Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
# Windows XP 64-bit

The biggest problem of the system is that these four dual-GPU graphics cards are cramped together and generate quite a lot of heat. The FASTRA uses aircooling and with the sidepanel removed the GPUs run at 55 degrees Celsius in idle, 86 degrees Celsius under full load and 100 degrees Celsius under full load with the shaders 20% overclocked. They have to run the system with the left side panel removed as the graphics cards would otherwise overheat but they're looking for a solution for their heat problem.

YouTube - FASTRA - Official Movie - English -...

REALLY impressive performance. Sure it only works for certain tasks, but a 4000 euro rig beating a big cluster is pretty cool. Tomography was a pretty big part of a visualization course I took about a year ago, though we mostly dealt with writing stuff that displayed reconstructed data, not doing the reconstruction itself.

[RaiZen18]

damn!!! I want to run Crysis on this system...

[Richard_Rahl]

Originally Posted by RaiZen18

damn!!! I want to run Crysis on this system...

It does not run SLI (according to another article), so its advantage over your system is not that big when it comes to the graphics cards.
It only does certain (tomographical) calculations very well.

[Magus]

All those videocards do look kinda cool.

[GMtm]

I am sure slay's rig looks better!

[Gazz]

Originally Posted by GMtm

I am sure slay's rig looks better!

I just hope that Slay looks better then the guy in the video

[RaiZen18]

Yea but Quad SLI Like that would be very cool (or hot) GOnna need good cooling!!! can you imagine 4 4850s the heat would be intense!!!

[Richard_Rahl]

Originally Posted by RaiZen18

can you imagine 4 4850s the heat would be intense!!!

lol my 4850 hits 80 degrees Celsius, 4 of them would be troublesome!

BTW, before you try again to OC your 4850, make sure you got a dual-slot aftermarket cooler. Increasing the rpm of the stock fan in Catalyst won't help you, because it will only turn that fast when it is (nearly) too late. I set my rpm settings at 65% (the rest is default) and it barely hits 45% afaik. Yet it is over 70C in after less than a half hour.

@Slaymate: correct me if I'm wrong, when it comes to my suggestion.

[GMtm]

80 degrees is well within the tolerance of 55nm parts. I think when I last read some research they discovered that 109 degrees was a problem temperature of prolonged periods. The silicon cells would literally collapse or merge with a nice pop!

BTW FYI that is not a Quad SLI rig at all. SLI is not running just 4x GPU running calculations via GPGPU and CUDA.

[tanka12345]

A nice PC, if only it was powered by ATI!