SGI to build 1,024-processor Origin 3000 system with NASA AmesMountain View 28 August 2000 NASA Ames has ordered two 512-processor SGI Origin 3800 systems and will combine them to serve as a test bed for a 1,024-processor supercomputer. The system will be used by NASA scientists for research in the areas of aeronautics, earth sciences and life sciences.
A 512-processor SGI 2800 system called Lomax -- the largest
single-system image in existence today -- has helped NASA Ames scientists
achieve monumental goals in technology research areas such as computational
fluid dynamics, global climate modeling and computational astrobiology. But
NASA Ames researchers are predicting even greater performance from the
1,024-processor SGI Origin 3000 series system.
"According to our projections, the SGI NUMAflex architecture is going to
deliver about six times the performance at 1,024 processors as the
512-processor system," said Bill Feiereisen, chief, Numerical Aerospace
Simulation (NAS) Systems Division at NASA Ames in Moffett Field, USA.
SGI NUMAflex is a revolutionary snap-together server system concept that
allows customers like NASA Ames to configure -- and reconfigure -- systems
brick by brick to meet the exact demands of their applications. A reduced
footprint on the SGI Origin 3000 series is also a big advantage for customers
with limited floor space to accommodate large computer systems.
"Our floor space at NASA Ames is pretty full and if the 1,024-processor
SGI Origin 3000 series system had been twice the size of the 512-processor SGI
2800 system, then we wouldn't have had room for it," said Feiereisen. "The SGI
Origin 3000 series, however, has twice the number of processors per square
foot, allowing us to push machinery around to make room for it."
NASA Ames, for instance, will run its Overflow-MLP
(Multi-Level Parallelism) computational fluid dynamic code on the
1,024-processor SGI Origin 3000 series shared memory system.
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