SCI: Terascale Computing System

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The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center will acquire, bring up, integrate, stabilize, assess and test on a representative set of initial applications an early model (prototype) supercomputing system This system is designed and built by Cray and is their Red Storm prototype model. This prototype model is designed to be a highly scalable capability system of very demanding, high end computational scientific and engineering research applications. It will be interfaced to, and served by, the PSC file and network systems and will be a component of the NSF TeraGrid Cyberinfrastructure project. This system is sufficiently large to support a broad range of testing to establish its viability, at a larger scale, as a leadership-class resource for the U. S. Research Community. The PSC Red Storm will be a modified version of the Red Storm system now under construction by Cray, Inc. for the Sandia National Laboratory (SNL).The PSC Red Storm system will comprise approximately 2,000 computational nodes for a peak performance of approximately ten teraflops. Each node includes an advanced 64-bit AMD Opteron processor and a proprietary network communications ASIC. The nodes are organized in a very high-speed, 3-D toroidal message-passing network. The overall system design includes an elaborate parallel RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) capability which will ensure very high reliability and manageability. The system software suite includes a light-weight kernel for compute nodes, Linux for the service and IO nodes, and a full programming environment. Both in hardware and software, this system uses COTS components where feasible. This project includes not only the investigation of the suitability of a particularly promising architecture but also involves application research work and the performance of useful topical research. The project includes infrastructure (facilities and instrumentation) networks, partnerships (evaluation and testing groups) and, if successful, lays the groundwork for additional infrastructure through upgrades. PSC workshops will provide dissemination and additional training.