Page 5 - Server Room 1

On this spot they test and prepare demo rigs that are used on exhibits and presentations. NVIDIA, of course has a team dedicated to this. At that time they where working on some beautiful PC's that where to be used on the E3 that started later that week.

Before we enter the server rooms (they have two of them) where we got a tour from Joseph I have to say it is interesting to see they are using so many platforms. This is where is all happens, the server farms are used to simulate your new graphics card and you'll understand that simulating them takes up a bit of processing power.

You'll notice servers, hundreds of them over multiple rows making noise and making you dizzy by looking at them. The servers are based on Pentium 4 boxes, itanium based boxed towards the most expensive ones from SUN. The philosophy behind it all is that the server park is extremely expensive, so they bought something from everything to see along the way would be the most economical and best solution. And all that connected to the fiber-optic backbone of NVIDIA's server facility.

Linux Boxes everywhere ! I believe they are now running on Pentium 4 platforms. 26 per rack times 20 racks if I recall correctly. And that was just one row. The guy on your right is the European PR Manager for NVIDIA. He never had been in the server-room also. The expression on his face says enough. We all had that same look the first few minutes by the way.

I'll be laughed at from Dave our forum Admin, die-hard Linux follower, if he sees this picture.

These are Sun Microsystems SunFire 6800 racks. Each unit has 196 GB Memory and will cost about 1 Million US Dollars, these are used in the final stage before taping out a product which is the process of passing on the design into a template for the end-product. Thus the process of actually fabricating the design into real silicon. I think you see about 12-13 of them right there.