In what has to be one of the most unusual listings in recent memory, an operational Cray XT5m supercomputer is now for sale on Craigslist.
The Cray XT5 is an updated version of the Cray XT4 supercomputer, launched on November 6, 2007. It includes a faster version of the XT4’s SeaStar2 interconnect router called SeaStar2+, and can be configured either with XT4 compute blades, which have four dual-core AMD Opteron processor sockets, or XT5 blades, with eight sockets supporting dual or quad-core Opterons. The XT5m variant is a mid-ranged supercomputer with most of the features of the XT5, but having a 2-dimensional torus network topology and scalable to 6 cabinets.
Nickname: Lynx
Former home: NCAR
Manufacturer: Cray Inc.
Clock Speed: 2.20GHz
Dates Used: Monday, April 26, 2010 to Monday, April 29, 2013
Microprocessor Peak Teraflops: 8.13
Memory (terabytes): 1.30TB
Number of Processors: 912.00
Electrical Power Consumption: 35.00 kW
Storage (terabytes): 32.00TB
I asked the seller John Parchman about the machines:
I ran across the three units (Two supercomputers and one Fiber Disk array) on a government auction. I was intrigued because unlike most government auctions they included the hard drives,OS, etc.. I was appalled that these beautiful machines were being sold for scrap so I bought them and now I am trying to find a permanent home for them.
According to Parchman, the listed price is just for classification and he is looking for offers. He also has a 64-node IBM 1350 cluster for sale as well.
If you are an interested buyer for these systems, email us at news@insideHPC.com and we’ll send you contact information. We’d love to track this story.
This is NOT the first time Cray systems have been on sale to the outside public. I recall seeing many on ebay.com and other public buy/sell/auction venues. Also it incorrectly lists these as being made by Cray Computer Corporation. It should have read Cray Inc.