For more information:
tezduyar@gmail.com
|
AHPCRC Bulletin: Summer 1997 - Volume 7 Number 3
New Computers for AHPCRC
Paul Muzio (AHPCRC-NetworkCS)
 |
| Tayfun Tezduyar and Congressman Martin Sabo
at a press conference on 16 October 1997 announcing the award of funds to the
AHPCRC for the procurement of new systems. |
The AHPCRC has announced that it will acquire and install new HPC systems in
early 1998. A contract has been signed with Silicon Graphics/Cray Research
to acquire a CRAY T3E-1200 supercomputer, which will be located in Minneapolis.
Also, negotiations are underway to acquire four IBM RS/6000 SP systems, which
will be located in January and February 1998 at AHPCRC partner sites-Clark
Atlanta, Florida A&M, Howard, and Jackson State Universities. Funding for the
systems was made available in the FY 1997 Defense Appropriations Act through
the efforts of Representative Martin Sabo of Minnesota.
The AHPCRC will receive delivery of the first (serial number 1) CRAY T3E-1200,
in January 1998. The T3E-1200 is similar in appearance to the SGI/CRAY
T3E-900, but uses faster processors and memory than the T3E-900. The
AHPCRC's T3E-1200 will have 256 user and 16 system processor elements, with a
total peak performance of 326 GigaFLOPS and a total of 139 Gigabytes of
distributed memory. At 139 Gigabytes, this T3E is one of the largest computers
in the world in terms of total memory. The system will also have 500 Gigabytes
of disk storage and 1 Terabyte of HIPPI RAID storage. It is expected that
the four IBM RS/6000 SP systems will have a total of approximately 80 nodes
with over 40 Gigabytes of distributed memory. All five systems are scalable,
distributed memory systems and will be used to support the Center's research on critical Army technology issues in the fields of 3D simulation and modeling,
computational structural mechanics, environmental sciences, advanced materials
science, and enabling technologies, and will be interconnected by a high speed
communications network. The acquisition, installation and operation of the
systems is being managed by the AHPCRC's system integrator, Network Computing
Services, Inc.
 |
| Walter Sturek, Paul Muzio, and Gary Hansen
viewing the AHPCRC's T3E-1200 being built at Cray Research's facilities in
Chippewa, Wisconsin. |
According to Tayfun Tezduyar, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and
AHPCRC Director, "Researchers at our Center address technological issues as
varied and complex as developing methods to control pollution and designing
safe deployment of parachute systems used in the crew return vehicle of the
international space station. This new computational power will enable us to
build a flexible simulation and modeling environment to address these pressing
technological issues."
Tezduyar went on to say "These new systems, with their high computational
power, will be important in maintaining our internationally recognized lead
in HPC research and education, ... and will be a powerful tool for our work in
developing the computational methodology for 3D modeling and simulation of flow
around, and the dynamics of, complex structures such as ram-air parachutes.
These parachutes are planned to be used for the delivery of large quantities of
material supplies and in support of the crew return vehicle for the space
station. These systems will also be a critical asset in our ability to develop
improved computational methods for groundwater modeling, drug design, and
materials science."
 |
| The AHPCRC's CM-5 has had a long, productive
life, having been in production for over 6 years. |
The CRAY T3E-1200 and IBM RS/6000 SPs will replace the Center's Thinking
Machines CM-5, which is scheduled to be turned off on 28 February 1998. This
system was the first CM-5 and was installed in August 1991. In its current
configuration, it has a total capability of 115 GigaFLOPS with 29 Gigabytes of
memory. It was a pioneering system in massively parallel computing and remains
as one of the largest and most heavily used scalable systems in operation in
the DoD inventory. A comparison between the T3E-1200 and CM-5 is provided in
Table 1.
| |
CRAY T3E-1200 |
TMC CM-5 |
|---|
| Peak System Performance |
326 GigaFLOPS |
115 GigaFLOPS |
| System Memory |
139 Gigabytes |
29 Gigabytes |
| Number of Processors |
272 (includes 16 system processors) |
896 |
| Peak Processor Element Performance |
1200 MegaFLOPS |
128 MegaFLOPS |
| Memory per Processor |
512 Megabytes |
32 Megabytes |
| Processor Type |
DEC Alpha EV 5.6 |
SPARC-2 with custom vector processors |
| System Disk |
500 Gigabytes |
125 Megabytes |
| HIPPI Disk |
1 Terabyte |
288 Gigabytes |
| Primary Coolant |
Liquid |
Air |
| Programming Models |
Message passing, HPF |
Data parallel |
| Table 1. Comparison between the T3E-1200 and
the CM-5. |
|
