- Rohan Dhamnaskar
Overview What is a Supercomputer Some Concepts Couple of examples.
sōō'p ə r-k ə m-pyōō't ə r
Supercomputer Dictionary definition: a very fast, powerful mainframe computer, used in advanced military and scientific applications. For our sake: Computer SYSTEM designed to operate at super high speeds which can perform complex calculations that would require greater than a year for a normal computer.
Measuring Performance FLOPS: FL oating point O perations P er S econd Usually prefixed by an SI unit of magnitude ○ Megaflops, Gigaflops, Teraflops, Petaflops ○ Usual 3GHz processor ~ 6 GFLOPS. LINPACK: A Benchmark software library written in FORTRAN to compute a n x n systems of Linear Algebra. (MATH 129A!) The result is reported in MFLOPS.
Parallel Processing Architechures
Cluster Architecture Each Computer (Node) is a complete Computer Connected to each other via a high speed bus Job broken up into blocks of data and executed independently. Cheap and easy to produce.
SDSU Supercomputers - DataStar IBM Power4+ based Performance: 15.6 teraflops (Overall) ~ 6.2 teraflops each ( 4 separate cluster sets) Processors: 2528 IBM p-Series (1.5 ~ 1.7 GHz) Memory: 7.3 TB Storage: 180 TB
SDSU Supercomputers - Intimidata IBM BG/L eServer (Blue Gene System) Performance: 17.2 teraflops (Overall) teraflops (LINPACK) Processors: 6144 PowerPC (700 MHz / 2 processors per Node) Memory: 1.5 TB Storage: 25 TB
Virginia Tech – System X 1110 Xserve G5 servers Performance: teraflops (Overall) 10 teraflops (LINPACK) Processors: 2200 PowerPC (2.3 GHz / 2 processors per Node) Memory: 4.3 TB Storage: 16 TB CHEAP!!!
Uses Supercomputers are mainly used to simulate: DNA / Protein Structures (Biology / Bioinformatics) Molecular Dynamics (Chemistry) Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence (Physics) Earthquake and Seismic activity (Geology) Fourier Transforms and Algebraic Systems (Mathematics) Global warming patterns (Environmental Sciences) Virtual CAD/CAM Design (Engineering) Solar atmosphere and Supernova Dynamics (Astronomy) NO COMPUTER SCIENCE ???
Multiprocessor Architecture I/O Port Device Controller CPU Memory CPU BUSBUS
Multiprocessor Architecture 2 to 8 processors (cores) Communication via Memory and System bus Large memory. (Memory Pool) Still Cheaper but lacks performance. Uses: Workstations, Application Servers, Gaming!!!
AMD Phenom – Quad Core Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz (2 MB L2 + 2 MB L3 on chip) Processor – Processor Bandwidth: 27.2 GB/s Front Side Bus: Upto1066MHz Uses : Gaming / Server
…..Thank you
Further Info. VirginiaTech Advanced Reasearch Computing Center. San Diego Supercomputing Center. AMD Multicore Technology. LINPACK. Lecture Notes: Parallel Computing. Dr. Lee.