Supercomputer Info

[wheelman]

Why Supercomputers are Fast
Several elements of a supercomputer contribute to its high level of performance:

Numerous high-performance processors (CPUs) for parallel processing
Specially-designed high-speed interconnects (internal networks)
Specially-designed or tuned operating systems

Supercomputer Processors
Supercomputers utilize either custom or mainstream commercial microprocessors. Small supercomputers may contain only a few dozen processors, but today's fastest supercomputers incorporate thousands of processors. The table below summarizes the processor configuration of today's top supercomputers.

System Processor Configuration
ASCI Red 9,472 Intel Pentium II Xeon
ASCI Blue Pacific 5,856 IBM PowerPC 604E
ASCI White 8,192 IBM Power3-II
NEC Earth Simulator 5,104 NEC vector processors


Some supercomputer designs feature network co-processors. When sending and receiving data at the rate necessary for high-performance networking, it's common for a single processor to become heavily loaded with communications interrupts that take away too many cycles from primary computing tasks. To solve this problem, the IBM Blue Gene system will utilize cells. Each cell contains a primary processor, a network co-processor, and shared on-chip memory.

In total, the IBM Blue Gene system will contain one million custom IBM processors. So that the system will fit within a reasonably-sized room and not consume too much power, the processors are engineered so small that 32 of them will fit on a single microchip.

[wheelman]

Supercomputer Interconnects
In order for a large number of processors to work together, supercomputers utilize specialized network interfaces. These interconnects support high bandwidth and very low latency communication.

Interconnects join nodes inside the supercomputer together. A node is a communication endpoint running one instance of the operating system. Nodes utilize one or several processors and different types of nodes can exist within the system. Compute nodes, for example, execute the processes and threads required for raw computation. I/O nodes handle the reading and writing of data to disks within the system. Service nodes and network nodes provide the user interface into the system and also network interfaces to the outside world. Special-purpose nodes improve overall performance by segregating the system workload with hardware and system software configured to best handle that workload.

Supercomputer nodes fit together into a network topology. Modern supercomputers have utilized several different specialized network topologies including hypercube, two-dimensional and three-dimensional mesh, and torus. Supercomputer network topologies can be either static (fixed) or dynamic (through the use of switches).

[wheelman]

Routing
One of the most critical elements of supercomputer networking is routing. Supercomputers that utilize message passing require routing to ensure the individual pieces of a message are routed from source to destination through the topology without creating hotspots (bottlenecks). Advanced routing techniques like wormhole and virtual cut-through routing are employed by today's ASCI supercomputers.

Supercomputers utilize various network protocols. Application data communications generally take place at the physical and data link layers. I/O and communications with external networks utilize technologies like HIPPI, FDDI, and ATM as well as Ethernet.

Supercomputer interconnects involve large quantities of network cabling. These cables can be very difficult to install as they often must fit within small spaces. Supercomputers do not utilize wireless networking internally as the bandwidth and latency properties of wireless are not suitable for high-performance communications.

Supercomputer Operating Systems
Many supercomputers run multiple copies of a UNIX-based operating system. The ASCI White and Blue Pacific systems, for example, run IBM AIX. In the 1990s, research into high-performance network operating systems led to the development of so-called "lightweight" operating systems (O/Ses) that consist of a small, simple kernel with many of the capabilities of a general-purpose O/S removed. The ASCI Red system runs the PUMA O/S on its compute nodes.

[wheelman]

Conclusion
Supercomputing is currently the most advanced of all high-performance computing (HPC) approaches. HPC alternatives like clustering and grid computing hold great promise for achieving high performance computing and communications at a low cost, but for now, supercomputers remain the world's fastest computing systems best suited for solving many critical scientific problems.

Supercomputers remain expensive and highly specialized. They run a limited set of applications and require non-stop "care and feeding" to keep running smoothly.

The IBM Blue Gene system represents the next generation of advanced supercomputing technology. When complete, it will operate at speeds up to 100 times greater than today's systems. In addition to solving computational problems, Blue Gene should influence the way in which mainstream computers of the future are built.

[tech_guru]

Excellent info Devnull..........

Keep up the good work!!!

[wheelman]

Thanks Tech_Guru.

[yogi_hm]

TOP500 SUPERCOMPUTER SITES

The TOP500 project was started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing. Twice a year, a list of the sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems is assembled and released. The best performance on the Linpack benchmark is used as performance measure for ranking the computer systems. The list contains a variety of information including the system specifications and its major application areas.



TOP500 INFORMATION

The 21st TOP500 List will be introduced during the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2003) in Heidelberg, June 24-27, 2003


20th TOP500 List now available
http://www.top500.org/

[yogi_hm]

How to Protect Large Computer Centers

From the very beginning, supercomputer systems have been an integral part of their environments. Over time, boundaries between organizations have become more permeable, and the world at large more interconnected.

As a first order approximation, everything is truly connected to everything else. Within this world, organizations create and use sensitive information (representing economic, competitive, commercial, scientific value), rely on their supercomputing environments to achieve defined levels of availability, and assume the integrity of data. Authorized users may be spread across the globe, co-located with unauthorized users, often outside of the scope of control of the supercomputer system owner. Data itself (input and output) is distributed in much the same way...

Security context -- why now?
The global Internet infrastructure means global vulnerabilities, even for organizations that think they are not on the Internet. Computer crime is not limited to the Fortune 500 -- the Supercomputing 500 list is a "target rich" environment for vandals, and for commercial, academic, and governmental, and insider foes as well. Threats and vulnerabilities are increasing, at the same time that effective barriers to connectivity are rapidly falling.

Security objectives -- what do we need?
Scientific computing environments are in some ways fundamentally different from business focused environments, yet the same set of security principles, objectives, and methods apply to both. In both environments, security designs are driven by the needs of the organization, viewed through a set of security filters.

Risk assessment
What needs protecting, from whom? The supercomputers are truly a 'cool' target for hackers as well as an interesting source of intelligence for professional espionage. The threat stems from a whole spectrum of possible intruder with varying skill levels.

Prevention
How do we design controls, not just for a single target system, but also for the broader environment? Describe standards of good practice for effective security.

Detection
Cost effective security designs do not eliminate risk, they manage it. People and systems fail and new attacks appear. What design elements allow for the detection of these failures and attacks?

Response
The best systems fail, so organizations need to plan for these failures so that they can respond to security incidents in organizationally-appropriate ways. Objectives of the a good response plan are regaining trusted operation level and identifying the 'how, why, and who'

[deakie]

the worlds fastest super computer used for predicting the weather was designed by an african who noticed the efficiency of bees operating in the cell like structure of the honeycomb. the structure was based on the design and activity of that natural system. 8)

[finni03]

Fortunately if you are a linux user you can now have a super compuer right at home. Open mosix (www.openmosix.org) is clustering tool to allow diskless machines to boot forming as cluster over normal 100 MB networking.