Supercomputer interconnect technologies, Opteron & Itanium

This article mentions the various interconnect methods that people are
trying on some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet:

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/art...cleId=13100603

or

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z18C422A5

Opteron highlights:
-The Cray Red Storm using 10368 Opterons will consume just 2MW
compared to the NEC Earth Simulator which uses 8MW. Both are rated at
40MFLOPs peak.
-Earth Simulator occupies 3250 sq. m. over 3 floors in Tokyo. Red
Storm will occupy only 3000 sq. ft. (1 sq. m. approx. = 9 sq. ft.)
-Cray has created a proprietary link chip called Seastar, which uses a
Hypertransport link to the Opterons, and uses a PowerPC controller.
-The Cray system is *not* using the internal SMP capabilities of the
Opteron though.

Itanium highlights:
-Pacific Northwest National Labs building an Itanium 2 supercomputer.
-Quadrics is supplying its QsNet II to link the Itanium 2's giving an
aggregrate bandwidth of 2.6GB/s.
-They estimate that the latency of the QsNet links is lower than with
Infiniband.
-The actual latency bottleneck lies within the PCI-X bus.

Next generation highlights:
-one word: silicon nanowires

-The Cray Red Storm using 10368 Opterons will consume just 2MW
compared to the NEC Earth Simulator which uses 8MW. Both are rated
at
40MFLOPs peak.

Nope. Teraflops, not Megaflops. 1,000 times more! ;-)

On 20 Aug 2003 11:15:09 +0200, Martin Høyer Kristiansen
wrote:

Felger Carbon wrote:
-The Cray Red Storm using 10368 Opterons will consume just 2MW
compared to the NEC Earth Simulator which uses 8MW. Both are rated

at

40MFLOPs peak.


Nope. Teraflops, not Megaflops. 1,000 times more! ;-)

Actually it's 1,000,000 times more

Cheers
Martin


Yup.

Giga = 1000x Mega
Tera = 1000x Giga
Peta = 1000x Tera

/daytripper (Kazillia = The Great Beyond ;-)

In comp.sys.intel Shuttie wrote:

"daytripper" wrote in message
...
On 20 Aug 2003 11:15:09 +0200, Martin H?yer Kristiansen
wrote:

Felger Carbon wrote:
-The Cray Red Storm using 10368 Opterons will consume just 2MW
compared to the NEC Earth Simulator which uses 8MW. Both are rated

at

40MFLOPs peak.


Nope. Teraflops, not Megaflops. 1,000 times more! ;-)

Actually it's 1,000,000 times more

Cheers
Martin


Yup.

Giga = 1000x Mega
Tera = 1000x Giga
Peta = 1000x Tera

To give some scale, 100THz is around the frequency of red light, 1EHz will
leak straight out of a wire and through you (x-ray)


To be complete :
exa = 1000x peta
zetta = 1000x exa
yotta = 1000x zetta ( or 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176)

Cheers vir eers



--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
What a wonderfull world it is that has girls in it! -- Robert A Heinlein.

dorothy.bradbury wrote:
To give some scale, 100THz is around the frequency of red light, 1EHz will
leak straight out of a wire and through you (x-ray)


Which reminds me how the Moore's law can't be sustained:
o Thermal output is outpacing die-shrinkage consistently
o By Moore's law by 2010 we hit problems of cooling

2MW vs 8MW is a large power saving not just on electricity for compute,
but also on the vast array of cooling required to remove the heat from it.

Still, one good thing is they may get the weather predictions right someday
:-)

If only by virtue of being responsible for the weather with their 7,000
degree chips.
--
My words are my own. They represent no other; they belong to no other.
Don't read anything into them or you may be required to compensate me
for violation of copyright. (I do not speak for my employer.)