COMPUTING ON A GRAND SCALE

摘要

Lemieux is a 6 TeraOP peak AlphaServer SC installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Funded by the National Science Foundation it is available to academic researchers across the US. Time on the machine is allocated by a scientific panel, 'grants' being based on the perceived value of the research and its demand for the massive compute performance available. Physically the machine occupies approx 300 sq meters and consumes approximately 5 MegaWatts. It comprises 750 individual servers (AlphaServer ES45) each with four Alpha microprocessor cpus. All 750 servers are interconnected so that a single program can run in parallel across all 3000 cpus. Lemieux is a powerful demonstration of COTS based supercomputing (COTS Commodity Off the Shelf) where standard servers (used in the mainstream commercial market for, as an example, database servers) are interconnected to deliver performance equivalent to machines designed specifically for scientific applications.