| Supercomputing Institute Research Bulletin |
Fall 1997 |
Supercomputing Institute researchers began using
the improved resources of the 272 node Cray T3E-900 this June. The upgraded service,
which is offered by Minnesota Supercomputer Center Inc., provides additional command
and application processors and increases the performance per processor. The interactive
and NQS limits have been increased to reflect the additional memory and number of
processors, while all other aspects of the service remain the same. The new machine
replaces the Cray T3E system that was installed in January 1997.The Cray T3E system is Cray Research Inc.’s second generation of scalable parallel processing systems to be built around a commodity microprocessor–the DEC Alpha 21164A (EV5). The T3E-900 processors run at 450 MHz, as compared to 300 MHz in the previous T3E system and 150 MHz in the T3D system. The processors are tightly coupled together by the unique Cray interconnect: 3-D bi-directional torus that helps to minimize the number of hops required for data migration between nodes and provides excellent scalability up to a maximum configuration of 2048 processing elements (PEs).
In addition to the interconnect, the Cray T3E-900 system features enhanced STREAMS and E-Registers. STREAMS maximize local memory bandwidth, allowing the microprocessor to run at full speed for vector-like data references, while E-Registers provide gather/scatter operations for local and remote memory references, using the full bandwidth of the interconnect for single-word remote reads and writes.
The configuration of the newly installed system contains a total of 272 processing elements, of which 256 are available for multi-PE applications. The remaining PEs are used for support functions and to provide single-PE “command” functions, such as compiling and linking. Rated at a theoretical peak of 900 megaflops per PE, the peak performance delivered by the 256 “application PEs” is greater than 230 gigaflops. Currently, 448 megabytes of memory are available per PE for use by each application.
The Cray T3E-900 runs the UNICOS/mk operation system, a scalable version of Cray’s UNICOS operating system. UNICOS/mk is the first truly scalable OS and provides a global view of the computing environment that allows administrators to manage a system-wide suite of resources as a single entity.
–Michael Olesen
|
|
![[BULLETINS]](../gifs/Bulletins.GIF){kind=small}
![[HOMEPAGE]](../gifs/Homepage.gif){kind=small}