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Building The MareNostrum COTS Supercomputer

Posted by timothy on from the available-at-every-pharmacy dept.

karvind writes "IBM Power Architecture Community Newsletter has a story about making a supercomputer (Number 4 on top 500 list) from easily available components (like BladeCenter and TotalStorage servers, 970FX PowerPC processors, and Linux 2.6). A joint venture between IBM and the Spanish government, it is named MareNostrum: the Latin term meaning 'our sea.' Peaking at 40 TFlops, the beast consists of 2,282 IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 blade servers housed in 163 BladeCenter chassis, 4,564 64-bit IBM PowerPC 970FX processors, and 140 TB of IBM TotalStorage DS4100 storage servers."

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Off who's shelf? by identity0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I love the first line in the article, which ends, "is constructed of such totally off-the-shelf parts as IBM BladeCenter JS20 servers, 64-bit 970FX PowerPC processors, TotalStorage DS4100 storage servers, and Linux 2.6. This is its story."

    Right, like I regularly go to Fry's to stock up on some DS4100s and Bladecenters. I'd love to be the geek for whom that stuff is "off-the-shelf". Can you even buy bare PPC CPUs and mobos?

  2. Re:War in the age of information warfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Keep in mind that these are Top500 KNOWN supercomputers.

    It's quite possible that many more computers that exist but are operating under classified conditions. For instance I would be suprised if the NSA had something for breaking crypto that rivaled some of the machines in the top 50 or so super computers, but it's not something that would appear on this list. This is for boasting rights only, if a place chooses not to publicize their computer, it won't end up on the list.

    American computers pretty much dominate. Some like the Spainish one are built by American companies (like IBM), but just happen to be installed in foreign places.

    Now the NEC Earth Simulator is a BIG exception. It dominated the top 500 for a considurable period of time and is completely japanese built, designed and owned. It is a huge technological acheivement and the pinnacle of technology for it's day. It's hard to relate to how significant it was. It is the top of the line when it comes to old-school massively parrallel supercomputers, blew American supercomputers out of the water.

    But along came Linux clusters (which in many ways is competely unsuitable for some of the things that Earth Simulator can do) and now Blue Gene. Which can possibly do twice the work as Earth Simulator, but consumes a fraction of the power and space needed to house these types of computers.