TL;DR: It’s not every day that one gets the chance to purchase a world-class supercomputer, but that’s exactly the opportunity afforded to bidders. GSA Auctions, a government surplus auction operator, is accepting bids for the Cheyenne supercomputer. The machine was constructed by Silicon Graphics (SGI). It is an SGI ICE XA system consisting of 4,032 dual-socket units configured as quad-node blades.
Cheyenne is driven by 8,064 Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors. Each Broadwell-class chip is built on a 14nm process and features 18 cores / 36 threads with a base frequency of 2.3 GHz that can Turbo Boost up to 3.6 GHz. In total, that works out to a staggering 145,152 processing cores.
The system utilizes DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank memory, and lots of it. In total, the new owner will get a machine with 313,344 GB of memory.
The auction listing mentions 14 E-Cell units, each weighing 1,500 pounds. Also referenced are 28 E-Rack units, all of which are watercooled. Notably, fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling is excluded from the auction, so you’ll need to supply your own.
Bidding started on April 26 with the auction scheduled to end on May 3 shortly after 6 p.m. Central Time. As of this writing (with less than three days remaining), 13 bids have been placed, and the current high bid sits at $28,085. Of note is the fact that the reserve has not yet been met.
Cheyenne went to work in January 2017 and was taken offline at the end of last year. At one time, it was ranked as the 20th fastest supercomputer in the world. As of last November, the Top500 list ranked it at number 160.
Interested parties should read through the full auction listing before submitting a bid. The machine is offered as-is in its current condition, and is experiencing “maintenance limitations” due to some faulty quick disconnects. What’s more, about one percent of nodes experienced failure during the supercomputer’s last six months of operation, which are mostly attributed to DIMMs with ECC errors.
