- Rohan Dhamnaskar

Overview

What is a Supercomputer

Some Concepts

Couple of examples.

sōō'pər-kəm-pyōō'tər

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: FLoating point Operations Per SecondUsually 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)13.83 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: 12.25

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 PortDeviceDevice

Controller

CPU

Memory

CPU

CPU

BUS

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. < http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/ > San Diego Supercomputing Center.

< http://www.sdsc.edu/ > AMD Multicore Technology.

< http://multicore.amd.com/ > LINPACK. < http://www.netlib.org/linpack/ > Lecture Notes: Parallel Computing. Dr. Lee.