[Infowarrior] - Jaguar Supercomputer Surpasses 50 Teraflops

[Richard Forno]

Jaguar Supercomputer Surpasses 50 Teraflops

Avatar03:25 PM, August 26th 2006
http://tinyurl.com/jwqr3
        
An upgrade to the Cray XT3 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
has increased the system¹s computing power to 54 teraflops, or 54 trillion
mathematical calculations per second, making the Cray among the most
powerful open scientific systems in the world.

The computer, dubbed Jaguar, is the largest in the Department of Energy¹s
Office of Science and is the major computing resource for DOE¹s Innovative
and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program.
The system is available to all scientific researchers and research
organizations, including industry, through an annual call for proposals.
Three of the four companies -- Boeing, DreamWorks Animation and General
Atomics -- awarded INCITE grants for 2006 are doing their work at ORNL.

"With the expansion of the leadership computing resources at Oak Ridge, the
Department of Energy is continuing to deliver state-of-the-art computational
platforms for open, high-impact scientific research," said Michael Strayer,
director of DOE's Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. "The
expanded system will be instrumental in addressing some of the most
challenging scientific problems in areas such as climate modeling, materials
science, fusion energy and combustion."

The upgrade involved replacing all 5,212 processors with Cray¹s latest
dual-core processors, doubling the memory and adding additional interconnect
cables to double the bisection bandwidth. The Jaguar now features more than
10,400 processing cores and 21 terabytes of memory. The upgraded Cray XT3
has passed ORNL¹s acceptance tests.

³The XT3 is a remarkable system for scientific calculations, and the upgrade
of all system components maintains the balance of the machine while doubling
the performance,² said ORNL¹s Thomas Zacharia, associate laboratory
director.

ORNL¹s Buddy Bland, project director for the Leadership Computing Facility,
noted that the upgrade went smoothly and on schedule, ³continuing Cray¹s
record of delivering major systems on time.²

DOE¹s Leadership Computing Facility is on a path to exceed 100 teraflops by
the end of this year and to reach a petaflop, or 1 quadrillion mathematical
calculations per second, by 2009.

³This represents a key milestone in our adaptive supercomputing vision as
well as a demonstration of our partnership with Oak Ridge National Lab aimed
at delivering a series of increasingly powerful productive supercomputers,
including a system that crosses the petaflop barrier,² said Peter Ungaro,
Cray chief executive officer and president. ³The powerful combination of
Cray supercomputers and the technical expertise at ORNL is destined to
result in significant breakthroughs in real-world scientific and engineering
problems that will ultimately have a major impact on society.²