National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center Picks IBM System for
Next-Generation Supercomputer With 3 Trillion Calculations Per Second
Capability

BusinessWire
Wednesday April 28 10:57am

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 28, 1999--The U.S. Department of
Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory today (April 28) announced that it
has selected an IBM RS/6000 SP system as the center's next-generation
supercomputer.

The IBM system was chosen based on its ability to handle actual scientific
codes and tests designed to ensure the computer's capability as a
full-production computing system in NERSC. These tests indicated that the
system, when fully installed, will provide four to five times the total
current computational power of NERSC, already one of the most powerful
supercomputing sites in the world. This agreement, a fixed-price, five-year
contract for $33 million, is the largest single procurement in the 68-year
history of Berkeley Lab.

"When one of our scientific research facilities takes a step like this,
it's critical that the decision meet both today's scientific needs and the
potential for even greater future demands," said Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson. "Not only will this partnership with IBM achieve these goals,
but our Berkeley Lab computing center's expertise will help IBM improve
their computers to make them even more effective. This partnership is
another example of the Department of Energy's leadership in the field of
computational science."

The new system, which will incorporate IBM's newest processor and
interconnect technology, will be installed in two phases. When completed,
the system will increase NERSC's computing capabilities by more than 400
percent.

Phase I installation, scheduled to begin in June 1999, will consist of an
RS/6000 SP with 304 of the two-CPU POWER3 SMP nodes that were recently
announced by IBM. This system will be the first implementation of the
POWER3 microprocessor, with two processors per node. The 64-bit POWER3 can
perform up to two billion operations per second and is more than twice as
powerful as its predecessor. In all, Phase I will have 512 processors for
computing, 256 gigabytes of memory and 10 terabytes of disk storage for
scientific computing. The system will have a peak performance of 410
gigaflops, or 410 billion calculations per second.

Phase II, slated for installation no later than December 2000, will consist
of 152 16-CPU POWER3+ SMP nodes, utilizing an enhanced POWER3
microprocessor. The entire system will have 2,048 processors dedicated to
large-scale scientific computing. The system will have a peak performance
capability of more than 3 teraflops, or 3 trillion calculations per second.

"Although some computing centers describe their system's performance in
terms of theoretical peak computing, we look at our systems in terms of how
much they can enhance our clients' ability to solve large-scale scientific
problems," said Bill Kramer, head of NERSC's High Performance Computing
Department and leader of the procurement effort. "That's the real measure
of performance in our view."

As part of the purchase contract, NERSC will work with IBM to develop
computer-utilization benchmarks and methods to assess and improve the
effectiveness of the SP system in a production environment. While the
theoretical peak performance of supercomputers can be amazingly fast, that
capability does not always represent real-world computing. To ensure that
the new NERSC system is well-suited to the workaday world, NERSC and IBM
have agreed to develop and test a "SUPER" (System Utilization Performance
Effectiveness Rating) benchmark for the new computer. This set of tests
will measure how well the SP delivers scientific work under a realistic
workload.

"Theoretical computer speed is comparable to the top end of a car's
speedometer, and while your car might be able to do 150 mph on the open
road, you're really more interested in how it will carry out your
day-to-day driving chores," Kramer said. "While we anticipate that most of
our users will appreciate the new machine's high speed capability, our main
concern is that they have the computing resources they need, when they need
it. This contract ensures the system will live up to NERSC's standards for
performance and reliability."

The SP is a highly scaleable system made up of building blocks called SMP
nodes. This architecture will allow NERSC users to increase the size of
their computations and make the results more meaningful. For example, one
area of research utilizing NERSC's computers is creating accurate models of
materials, such as magnets. More powerful computers allow scientists to
create larger models, of 1,000 atoms or more, and gain a better
understanding of how magnetic fields are affected by temperature. Such
research has applications in fields ranging from computer disk drives to
power generation.

"The continuing partnership between IBM and the Department of Energy is
further testimony to what can be accomplished when two leaders in the field
of computational science push the boundaries of conventional thinking,"
said Rodney Adkins, general manager, IBM RS/6000. "I can't think of
anything more noble than being a part of making lives better, whether it's
through helping design cleaner engines or increasing life-saving knowledge
about our environment through climate modeling. As always, the knowledge we
gain from this initiative will also benefit our commercial customers around
the world through powerful business solutions."

The SP's architecture will also allow NERSC to run a variety of
different-sized computations simultaneously, thereby providing faster
turnaround of results for users across the country.

NERSC provides high-performance scientific computing and data storage
resources to about 2,500 researchers at national laboratories, universities
and industry across the nation who are working on Department of
Energy-funded programs such as combustion, climate modeling, fusion energy,
materials science and computational biology. NERSC's seven supercomputers,
the largest of which is currently a 640-processor Cray T3E-900, are
utilized 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are up and running more
than 95 percent of the time, so the computers must be both highly reliable
and high-speed.

Established in 1974 as the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer
Center to provide computing cycles to fusion energy researchers, NERSC's
first computer was a borrowed Control Data Corp. 6600. Considered a
computing powerhouse at the time, the 6600's overall performance was
two-and-a-half million calculations per second.

NERSC's new machine will be 12 million times more powerful. The new system
will also be 13,000 times more cost-effective.

Additional information about NERSC is available at www.nersc.gov. Berkeley
Lab (www.lbl.gov) conducts unclassified research and is managed by the
University of California for the Department of Energy.

Contact:
NERSC, Berkeley

Jon Bashor, 510/486-5849
--
Robert E. Williams, Jr.
President/MCUG Librarian
Miami Computer Users' Group
Miami University, Oxford, OH

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