SGI introduces ACE cluster technology for Irix and Linux

 Mountain View 27 Jan 00 SGI introduced the Advanced Cluster Environment (ACE) for compute-intensive applications. ACE brings technology used by the US national labs to a broad range of technical users and easily scales compute power to meet individual needs. Available now on SGI's IRIX operating system platform, a Linux version of ACE will soon be available.

With large, scalable shared-memory systems and packaged compute cluster solutions, SGI offers the broadest range of system configurations for optimal workload distribution in demanding compute environments. SGI's compute clusters are designed for solving large, complex problems requiring multiple processors where it is more efficient to divide the problem into smaller elements, or for running multiple jobs in a batch-style environment. SGI's large shared-memory systems are most efficient for complex modeling applications, like computational fluid dynamics, where the interaction of a variety of individual elements must be simultaneously analyzed.

SGI IRIX Advanced Cluster Environment (ACE) software offers customers complete production clustering as a complement to its line of massively scalable Origin systems. It leverages years of clustering technology development at SGI, drawing directly on SGI's vast experience with implementations like the 1,536-processor system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the 6,144-processor system at Los Alamos National Labs (LANL).

Designed for clustering SGI 2100 midrange servers, the SGI IRIX Advanced Cluster Environment includes all the necessary tools for cluster management, performance monitoring, job scheduling, load balancing, and software distribution. The SGI Message Passing Toolkit enables users to build cluster-aware applications. Management tools include Performance Co-Pilot for performance monitoring, ARRAY Services and IRISconsole for cluster management and administration, and RoboInst for software distribution. Platform Computing's LSF provides job scheduling and load balancing services across the cluster.

CXFS, SGI's highly scalable and resilient clustered file system also included with ACE, enables unprecedented data access across shared disks in a clustered configuration. Built upon XFS, the industry's most advanced journalled file system, CXFS provides a single file system accessible from multiple heterogeneous hosts (such as IRIX, Linux and Windows NT operating systems) sharing disks over a storage area network with the performance of a local file system.

Additionally, ACE leverages key SGI-developed technologies to ensure peak system performance and scalability including:

  • Gigabyte System Network (GSN) - the fastest, standards-based system interconnect available, GSN improves the hardware latency of clusters and delivers 800MB/s bandwidth with 7-microsecond round-trip hardware latency.

  • Schedule Transfer Protocol (STP) - an ANSI draft standard protocol that allows clustering programming libraries, like Message Passing Interface, to take advantage of high-performance interconnects like GSN.

  • SGI 2100 servers - SGI's midrange server that delivers enterprise-class performance and bandwidth at aggressive entry-level price points. The SGI 2100 server leverages the I/O bandwidth technology of the company's highly scalable ccNUMA (cache-coherent non-uniform memory access) architecture, and offers customers powerful interoperability and scalability from two- to eight-processors.

    Installation and configuration, comprehensive services and support, and timely software updates complete the solution.

    SGI IRIX Advanced Cluster Environment software is available immediately for SGI 2100 servers through SGI sales offices worldwide starting at $45,000 U.S. list for 16 processors, to $150,000 for 64 processors.

     

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