Supercomputer āJaguarā Making Headway
Wed Mar 30, 3:13 PM ET
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Big orange and white cabinets that will form one of the worldās fastest supercomputers for open science research are arriving at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The high-performance units are part of a new Cray Corp. XT3 supercomputer, nicknamed āJaguar,ā that could be reaching record speed before yearās end.
Nine cabinets arrived Monday, bringing the total to 20, and there could be another 100 on the way in the months ahead.
The orange and white color scheme is no accident. They are the school colors of the University of Tennessee, which jointly manages the Department of Energy facility with Battelle Memorial Institute.
āWe actually got the color swatch off the UT Web site,ā said Mark Dobbs, who works at the labās Center for Computational Sciences.
With its current 20-cabinet configuration, Jaguar is expected to be capable of 10 trillion calculations per second, or 10 teraflops. Tests over the next couple of weeks will confirm that.
Another 20 cabinets are due May 2, raising the performance level to 20 trillion calculations per second. In late June, the total number of cabinets will grow to 56, with a peak speed of about 25 teraflops.
If funding becomes available, the lab and Cray are planning to rapidly scale up Jaguar to 120 cabinets before Sept. 30, when the current federal fiscal year ends.
That setup would drive the power up to 100 teraflops, or 100 trillion calculations per second, and make Jaguar the fastest machine available for unclassified scientific uses. It would have the processing power of 50,000 personal computers.
āThat is the goal,ā Robert Silvia, the labās group leader for high-performance computing operations.
By comparison, DOEās National Nuclear Security Administration announced last week that its IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer, used to maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing, achieved 135.3 trillion calculations per second, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world. And itās still only halfway installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Meanwhile in Oak Ridge, another Cray system, an X1 nicknamed āPhoenix,ā also is being upgraded. This system is particularly suited for scientific studies of global climate change and nuclear fusion, while the Jaguar is supposed to be best for research on materials, nanoscience and biology.
Cray and the lab are hoping to āmarryā the technologies of both systems into a next-generation machine, to be called āRainier,ā that could deliver 250 teraflops, or 250 trillion calculations per second, in 2007.
āEverything thatās important to Oak Ridge, we should be able to do on that new machine out in 2007,ā Silvia said. āBy that time, we will have the codes and the science applications running well enough to take advantage of that (speed). Because weāre still learning on these machines.ā
Hi TomS:
Thatās fastenating report Tomā¦
I wonderā¦ When Iām all done with my P-111, if I can turn it over to them and they can fire it onto the heapā¦ It might help them with their āSpeed Issuesā, and allā¦ and save me from contaminating the landfill siteā¦ , with itā¦ heheheā¦
Itās tough for me to imagine a million calculations per secondā¦ let alone 250 trillion calculations per secondā¦ What nextā¦
Billā¦
ā¦ and it was all built with a single Intel P4 heavily overclockedā¦ with one huge heatsink on itā¦
Mike
Yes, but will it run Unreal Tournament without lag??
.-=gp=-.
Betcha the ASIO drivers are crap.
Quote (Willy @ Mar. 31 2005,15:58) |
Betcha the ASIO drivers are crap. |
AND a few instances of SIR would kill it......
How many tracks can you get out of 25 Teraflops?
TG
Quote (chutz @ Mar. 31 2005,12:34) |
Yes, but will it run Unreal Tournament without lag?? .-=gp=-. |
huh?
Game geek.
Quote (chutz @ Mar. 31 2005,12:34) |
Yes, but will it run Unreal Tournament without lag?? .-=gp=-. |
Thats the audio equivalent of running 96+ tracks simultaneously without aux bussing effects or anything. You just have to pray your processor does not melt into a puddle of silicon slag and plastic goo......
TG
Yeah, but can it handle my lightening fast fretboard fanatics?
Oh, wait a sec,
Iām 49 now.
My playing is slower than mollasses in winter nowadays, NEVERMIND!
Donāt worry Yaz. They are gonna throw Band in a Box in there. Wonāt need any human intervention to jumble the bits. No LP wrangling or Strat strangling necessary!
TG
Well, Iāve upgraded, something called the Eniac - kind of a dumb name, if you ask me, makes it sound soā¦retro or something:
That looks like some of the things Iāve R&Dād, over the yearsā¦
Thatās a nice lookāin setupā¦ Looks like a Battery Powered Cloths Dryer ā¦ lolā¦
Billā¦