DoE, IBM Supercomputer Shatters LINPACK Test

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Thursday said that a BlueGene/L supercomputer built
by IBM for nuclear arms research runs at a record 70.72
teraflops, making it the fastest computer on the LINPACK benchmark test.

Jack Dongarra, LINPACK test creator and co-author of the well-regarded
Top500 report of the world’s most powerful computing systems, confirmed the
record in an e-mail to internetnews.com.

The Top500 authors use the Fortran-based LINPACK benchmark as their
“yardstick of performance” for gauging the performance of a dedicated system
for solving a dense system of linear equations. Teraflops, or one trillion
floating points per second, are the key metrics when determining the
processing speed of computing systems.

The DoE, whose National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) worked on the
system for years with IBM, is using the machine for the nation’s Stockpile
Stewardship Program to study how the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile is
aging. With BlueGene/L, NNSA is able to do this without risky underground
nuclear testing.

This particular BlueGene/L dwarfs earlier supercomputers, according to the
LINPACK test, including a BlueGene/L
system announced in September that runs at 36.01 teraflops and NEC’s
Earth Simulator, which runs at 35.86 teraflops .

More striking, perhaps, is that the new DoE system isn’t finished, currently
only running at one quarter its final size, said U.S. Secretary of Energy
Spencer Abraham in a statement.

“The delivery of the first quarter of the BlueGene/L system to Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory this month shows how a partnership between
government and industry can effectively advance national agendas in science,
technology, security and industrial competitiveness,” said Abraham.

The final BlueGene/L system, to be delivered to Lawrence Livermore early
next year in 64 racks with more than 130,000 processors, will exceed the
performance of the NEC Earth Simulator by a factor of nine. It will also
require one-seventh the electrical power and one-fourteenth the floor space.
IBM expects smaller super systems like this to be the rule in the future.

Abraham went on to describe high-performance computing, in which multiple
systems are used in congress to perform several mathematical equations
simultaneously, as the “backbone of the nation’s science and technology
enterprise.”

Some trends indicate Abraham’s claim is hardly hyperbole. Several government
agencies are currently creating supercomputers with high-tech systems
vendors to solve problems in climatology, chemistry, life sciences, physics
and nuclear weapons testing.

Dongarra and his fellow authors plan to announce the new supercomputing
rankings for 2004 Monday afternoon. This year’s results could be the most
anticipated yet. Rivals IBM, SGI, Cray, HP and Sun Microsystems have
been preparing to make announcements at the show.

SGI and IBM have been exchanging boasts about who had the most powerful
supercomputer of late. SGI last week announced
it has powered NASA’s “Columbia” supercomputer, which clocks in at 42.7
teraflops when running LINPACK, eclipsing IBM’s previous Blue Gene by 6.84
teraflops.

But at 70.72 teraflops, the latest BlueGene/L again vaults to the top
slot — at least until the Top500’s announcement Monday.