32 Core Hackintosh?

[Jeronimo2000]

As of Mavericks the most OS X could support is 128 GB.

I don't know where you got that info, but I believe it to be incorrect. Since Snow Leopard, OS X supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM (theoretically, of course, at least for the foreseeable future).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

 

[Stork]

As of Mavericks the most OS X could support is 128 GB.

I don't know where you got that info, but I believe it to be incorrect. Since Snow Leopard, OS X supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM (theoretically, of course, at least for the foreseeable future).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

The memory limitation is due to the Mac Pro designs. The Mac Pro 5,1 was the only classic Mac Pro to support 128GB, IIRC. The previous Mac Pro's were limited to lesser amounts. It's a hardware design limitation. See everymac.com.

 

[Tutor]

Hi Tutor,

I was wondering if you have recently tried more than 32 cores with Mac OS 10.10.x?
Also by any chance do you now what is the max of RAM that OS 10.10.x can cable?
If we consider 6TB of RAM on supermicro MoBo, do you think would that work?

Thank you.

I have not tried OSX 10.10 yet. Mavericks recognizes the full 128Gs that I've installed. Not sure whether any greater amount of ram would work.

 

[LazarX]

They do it by using multi core CPU's in a board that will take two or four of them. So if you have a four 8 core CPU's, theres your 32 cores. With clustering, you would refer to the number of cores in the cluster, the sum total of all cores in each computer.

Its rather unusual to have a 32 core hackintosh but not impossible, and very expensive.

And not particularly useful unless you have applications specifically built to take advantage of that many cores.

 

[rwillett]

And not particularly useful unless you have applications specifically built to take advantage of that many cores.

I have to say that whilst this forum has many advantages and is great for Hackintosh advice, its not the first place I would come for advice on clustering or on building machines with more than 32 cores or 6TB of RAM.

I have designed, built and run reasonable sized clusters, my largest was 54 machines each with four Intel Xeon CPU's each with four cores, 32GB RAM, 73GB disk, 3 p-Series servers for databases and a very large disk array, 30TB comes to mind which was a lot when we built this around 6-7 years ago. Our biggest issue was cooling the racks down as the stuff was housed in a secure computing centre and the amount of heat the racks put out completely blew out the 'normal' cooling system. Since we had concrete walls, floors and ceilings we couldn't just run pipes out the windows

I am not that up to date these days but the last time I looked, Mac OS X wasn't really designed for high performance computing. It appears to handle 128GB and might handle more but apparently there is a limitation of 32 cores on the OS and stuff like that.

Everybody (ok, almost everybody), uses Linux to do high performance computing now. I used to work for IBM and most of our high performance kit was Linux based, though we did get some great performance out of P-Series and zOS, its expensive compared to Linux and simply not as flexible. Have a look at the top 500 super computer charts and see whats in there. When we did our big rack we would have scraped in at around 1,200 or so. Not much of a claim to fame

If your problem requires more than 32 cores and apparently 6TB of RAM then you need to look outside of this forum and into what your software supports. I'd be very, very surprised if your software was Mac OS X only. Also if you're writing software then I would also look at a Linux cluster, you can scale out easily, there's masses of software to support clustering and its now pretty much mainstream.

If you can afford 6TB of RAM you afford a high performance clustering consultant to advise you

Rob

 

[ThunderDome]

I have to say that whilst this forum has many advantages and is great for Hackintosh advice, its not the first place I would come for advice on clustering or on building machines with more than 32 cores or 6TB of RAM.

I have designed, built and run reasonable sized clusters, my largest was 54 machines each with four Intel Xeon CPU's each with four cores, 32GB RAM, 73GB disk, 3 p-Series servers for databases and a very large disk array, 30TB comes to mind which was a lot when we built this around 6-7 years ago. Our biggest issue was cooling the racks down as the stuff was housed in a secure computing centre and the amount of heat the racks put out completely blew out the 'normal' cooling system. Since we had concrete walls, floors and ceilings we couldn't just run pipes out the windows

I am not that up to date these days but the last time I looked, Mac OS X wasn't really designed for high performance computing. It appears to handle 128GB and might handle more but apparently there is a limitation of 32 cores on the OS and stuff like that.

Everybody (ok, almost everybody), uses Linux to do high performance computing now. I used to work for IBM and most of our high performance kit was Linux based, though we did get some great performance out of P-Series and zOS, its expensive compared to Linux and simply not as flexible. Have a look at the top 500 super computer charts and see whats in there. When we did our big rack we would have scraped in at around 1,200 or so. Not much of a claim to fame

If your problem requires more than 32 cores and apparently 6TB of RAM then you need to look outside of this forum and into what your software supports. I'd be very, very surprised if your software was Mac OS X only. Also if you're writing software then I would also look at a Linux cluster, you can scale out easily, there's masses of software to support clustering and its now pretty much mainstream.

If you can afford 6TB of RAM you afford a high performance clustering consultant to advise you

Rob

I have had the worst luck trying to figure out how to hackintosh my 20 core (2x 2680v2) with an x9dai motherboard. Everywhere I look, I find contradicting instructions and information. I don't even know what to believe as far as Sierra being capable of running that many cores. Could you please point me in the right direction?

 

[rwillett]

I have had the worst luck trying to figure out how to hackintosh my 20 core (2x 2680v2) with an x9dai motherboard. Everywhere I look, I find contradicting instructions and information. I don't even know what to believe as far as Sierra being capable of running that many cores. Could you please point me in the right direction?

The fact you are having so much trouble finding this information out is probably because nobody has done this As I said in 2015 (!), people don't tend to use OS X for large core count systems. I think Apple only makes 12 core machines, I recall that Apple also limited the number of cores to 32. However I read this stuff in passing and I have no idea where I got it.

If you cannot find any guidance on doing this then I would assume its not easily doable.

I have to ask the question, why? Why would you spend so much time and effort on doing this when you could easily do this in Linux and know it would work. Horses for courses.

Rob

 

[Stork]

Have you seen this User Builds description? https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...dwell-v4-cpus-64gb-ddr4-ecc-rdimm-ram.202927/

 

[misterphoton]

I have had the worst luck trying to figure out how to hackintosh my 20 core (2x 2680v2) with an x9dai motherboard. Everywhere I look, I find contradicting instructions and information. I don't even know what to believe as far as Sierra being capable of running that many cores. Could you please point me in the right direction?

I have a SuperMicro x9DAi MB as well, but only with 6 core XEONS (x2). My contact information is at my profile, so please feel free to contact me, Nick/ mister photon or misterphoton on this forum.

 

[Crashackintoss]

Did you all know you can convert a real mac mini server or mac mini into a rackmount solution with this:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacminiserver.html

and a Mac Pro into a rackmount server solution with this:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacproserver/index.html

if apple wasn't so retarded though they'd make a real server again or provide the motherboard, so that companies like Sonnet could make a better rackmount solution with all the bells and whistles you expect from a server or PC server from another computer manufacturer. For instance, supermicro makes more normal server rackmount solutions than apple allows and so do other PC manufacturers.