CSC 456 Spring 2012/11a NC

Large-Scale Multiprocessor Examples

Some examples of large-scale multiprocessor systems include Fujitsu's K Computer, the Tianhe-1A from the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China, and [another example or two].

K Computer

Made by Fujitsu, the K Computer consists of 88,128 processors between 864 cabinets. Each cabinet contains 96 nodes which, in turn, each contain one processor and 16 GBytes of memory. <ref name="kprocs"/>

The system is networked together via point-to-point, or direct, connection. <ref name="knetwork"/>

The K Computer is not a distributed shared memory (DSM) machine in which the physically separate nodes are addressed as one logically shared address space. Instead, the K Computer utilizes a message passing interface (MPI), allowing the nodes to pass messages to one another as needed.

Tianhe-1A

The Tianhe-1A, sponsored by the National University of Defense Technology in China, is capable of 2.566 petaFLOPS. It is comprised of 14,336 Xeon X5670 processors and 7,168 Nvidia GP-GPUs. In addition to the Xeon and Nvidia chips, there are 2048 FeiTeng 1000 processors.

All of these processors are contained in 112 computer cabinets, 12 storage cabinets, 6 communication cabinets, and 8 I/O cabinets. In each cabinet are 32 blades and a 16 port switch.

References

<references> <ref name="kprocs">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_computer</ref> <ref name="knetwork">http://www.riken.jp/engn/r-world/info/release/pamphlet/aics/pdf/2010_09.pdf</ref> </references>