NASA's New Supercomputer Powered by Intel® Itanium® 2 Processors
At an event marking a significant milestone for Intel and the scientific research community, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled its newest supercomputer, the Columbia, which is powered by 10,240 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. Several Intel executives joined Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, home of the new supercomputer.
NASA's 10,240-processor Columbia supercomputer is built from 20 Altix systems, each powered by 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors. (Image courtesy of Silicon Graphics, Inc.)
The powerful system, built by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), promises to revolutionize the rate of scientific discovery at NASA. Using only 16 of its 20 installed systems, Columbia achieved sustained performance of 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or 42.7 teraflops.
"If you could do one calculation per second by hand, it would take you a million years to do what this machine does in a single second," said G. Scott Hubbard, Ames' director.
The new performance record eclipses the performance of every supercomputer operating today and knocks NEC's Earth Simulator off its perch as the world's No. 1 machine—a spot it has held since 2002.
The powerful system, built by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), promises to revolutionize the rate of scientific discovery at NASA. Using only 16 of its 20 installed systems, Columbia achieved sustained performance of 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or 42.7 teraflops.
"If you could do one calculation per second by hand, it would take you a million years to do what this machine does in a single second," said G. Scott Hubbard, Ames' director.
The new performance record eclipses the performance of every supercomputer operating today and knocks NEC's Earth Simulator off its perch as the world's No. 1 machine—a spot it has held since 2002.
A New Generation of Supercomputers Unlike traditional supercomputer deployments that have taken years to roll out, Columbia was fully deployed in fewer than 120 days. The supercomputer was available to scientists throughout its installation, giving NASA and the U.S. government an immediate and revolutionary boost in tackling some of history's toughest scientific problems.
The record-breaking deployment has led some industry analysts to conclude that Columbia signals a significant shift, a new era in supercomputing design in which the most powerful computer systems can be deployed in weeks rather than many months or even years.
"With SGI and Intel, we set out to revitalize NASA's computing capabilities, and the Columbia system has done so in a spectacular way," said Walt Brooks, division chief, Advanced Supercomputing Division, NASA. "Only days after new 512-processor systems were installed, we had scientists doing real Earth and space analysis on them. The speed and ease with which this supercomputer came together was phenomenal, and the science that already has been produced has been extraordinary."
The record-breaking deployment has led some industry analysts to conclude that Columbia signals a significant shift, a new era in supercomputing design in which the most powerful computer systems can be deployed in weeks rather than many months or even years.
"With SGI and Intel, we set out to revitalize NASA's computing capabilities, and the Columbia system has done so in a spectacular way," said Walt Brooks, division chief, Advanced Supercomputing Division, NASA. "Only days after new 512-processor systems were installed, we had scientists doing real Earth and space analysis on them. The speed and ease with which this supercomputer came together was phenomenal, and the science that already has been produced has been extraordinary."
source : http://www.intel.com/
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