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Sun Super Computer May Hit 2 Petaflops
Fletcher writes to tell us that Sun Microsystems has revealed their "Constellation System", a new supercomputing platform that the company hopes will put them back in the running for top dog in the supercomputer race. "The linchpin in the system is the switch, the piece of hardware that conducts traffic between the servers, memory and data storage. Code-named Magnum, the switch comes with 3,456 ports, a larger-than-normal number that frees up data pathways inside these powerful computers. 'We are looking at a factor-of-three improvement over the current best system at an equal number of nodes," said Andy Bechtolsheim, chief architect and senior vice president of the systems group at Sun. "We have been somewhat absent in the supercomputer market in the last few years.'"
If you RTFA you will note that, actually, this particular system is built around the Barcelona architecture (from AMD). It remains to be seen if T2 and later on Rock will really be competative against AMD and Intel.
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Actually 3456 is 12 X 12 X 12 X 2. It's not actually a 3456 port router, it's a fat tree of 24-port router modules. Each rank 1 & 2 module has 12 ports down and 12 ports up. The rank 3 modules have 12 ports down, and 12 sidelink ports to one another. Thus you end up with a 3456 port, rank 3.5 fat tree all in one box.
I'll add:
This is not an unusual arrangement for existing infinaband networks. The distinction is that they have all of these 864 switch modules in a cabinet, and the wiring is probably traces on a backplane, rather than flexible cables. This improves the reliability, reduces the cost, and makes it a whole lot easier to install. That may sound silly, but you're talking about 10,000 cables, each with endpoint connectors on each end. Even buying in bulk, that's a lot of money in cables.
...but will it run linux?
The first one of these being built, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, is in fact running Linux, not Solaris (See this Register article). Sun will support both.