375 Gflop/s Linux cluster with 512 processors called LosLobos in Albuquerque

Albuquerque 06 Apr 00 The National Computational Science Alliance in the USA will take delivery of a 512-processor Linux supercluster within the next month. The new supercluster, called LosLobos, will be located at the University of New Mexico's (UNM) Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center (AHPCC), one of the Alliance Partners for Advanced Computational Resources sites.

"The Linux movement benefits greatly from the strong support of top researchers and programmers at our nation's leading universities and laboratories," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President, Technology & Strategy, IBM Enterprise Systems Group. "The innovation of the Alliance, supported by the research community, will lead the way for commercial Linux applications and product development."

LosLobos will consist of 256 IBM Netfinity PC Servers. The 733 MHz Intel IA-32 processor based computer system is expected to provide a peak theoretical performance of about 375 gigaflops. The high performance interconnect network between the cluster nodes will be Myricom's Myrinet, providing speeds exceeding 1 gigabyte per second, which is comparable to the fastest interconnects in today's traditional supercomputers.

This new supercluster will increase the computing capabilities of the Alliance, a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded partnership, providing researchers with a platform for developing improved cluster management tools. It will also offer the research community the chance to gain operational experience on large-scale clusters, and to explore the scalability of different types of science and engineering applications.

Unlike previous superclusters made of commodity computers, LosLobos will integrate new advanced management tools, such as the Maui Scheduler, into its array of services. The Maui Scheduler, developed by UNM's Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC), will integrate scheduling and reservation capabilities into the cluster, decreasing queue wait times and allowing easier access to a larger percentage of computing resources. LosLobos will be a part of the Alliance's Virtual Machine Room, which is the national infrastructure for geographically distributed computing.

LosLobos represents a major trend in supercomputing—a moderately priced entry point into high performance computing that offers the enhanced performance required by scientific and engineering applications. The IBM supercluster system will be delivered in mid-April, and the Alliance will begin to allocate time nationally on the system this summer. The Alliance currently offers a 128-processor Linux supercluster, RoadRunner, also located at AHPCC, and a 416-processor supercluster primarily used with Windows NT at its leading-edge site, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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