Argonne National Laboratory acquires first SiCortex SC5832
Department of Energy research center to enable scientific community to use
groundbreaking power-efficient architecture
Maynard, Mass. (Oct. 16, 2007) — SiCortex, the first company to engineer
a Linux® cluster from the silicon up, today announced that the first production
model of an SC5832, its flagship 5.8 teraflop system, will be installed at
the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont, Ill.
The lab and its community of researchers will take advantage of the unique
capabilities and energy efficiencies of the SC5832 to conduct research in a
variety of areas, including astrophysics, climate modeling, oil and gas exploration,
seismic research and biotechnology.
The SC5832 is a high performance computer that dramatically reduces power
usage while providing industry-leading performance. A SiCortex cluster node
consumes 15 watts of power, an order of magnitude less than the 250 watts used
in a conventional cluster node.
"As we move into the era of petascale computing, scaling current applications
to work with thousands of processors will be a major challenge," said Rick
Stevens, associate laboratory director of Computing
and Life Sciences at Argonne. "We believe that the power-efficient SiCortex architecture represents the
way high-performance computers will be designed in the future."
SiCortex has introduced a new concept in high-performance computing by implementing
a complete cluster node on a chip, including six 64-bit processors, multiple
memory controllers, a high-performance cluster interconnect and a PCIexpress
connection to storage and internetworking. The SC5832 can perform six trillion
operations per second in a cabinet that is less than one-third the size of
conventional clusters.
"There is no more competent and motivated team than at Argonne," said SiCortex
CEO John Mucci. "Their interests in existing applications, in fostering
innovative new applications, and in exploring and utilizing green, energy-efficient
new computer architectures make Argonne an ideal partner. In particular, we
share their belief that open source software is a powerful paradigm for moving
applications forward."
High-performance computers increasingly consist of many thousands of processors,
presenting unique software challenges. In order to operate effectively, these
large-scale computers require extremely fast communications between processors
and substantial I/O bandwidth. The SC5832 boasts the fastest communications
and I/O of any computer in its class running current applications.
Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) Division has a long tradition
of acquiring, evaluating and deploying advanced high-performance computing
architectures. Moreover, the division has been a leader in developing open
source software that is widely used throughout the HPC community.
"The SiCortex platform is completely open source, from the operating system
to the job scheduler," said Ewing Lusk, director of Argonne's MCS Division. "In
addition to solving challenging computational problems, the machine will benefit
the whole computer science community, as they improve, extend, and contribute
to the open source software community for petascale platforms."
The MCS Division is operated with support from the Office of Advanced
Scientific Computing Research in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
About SiCortex
SiCortex, the first company to engineer a Linux cluster from the silicon up,
is dedicated to the proliferation of open teraflop computing to a wide variety
of users by providing "Teraflops from Milliwatts." Founded in 2003 by a respected
team of computer industry executives, the company is backed by a number of
top tier investors, including Chevron Technology Ventures, Flagship
Ventures, JK&B Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, Prism VentureWorks and
Hercules Technology Growth Capital. For more information visit http://www.sicortex.com/.
About Argonne
Argonne National Laboratory brings
the world's brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and
creative new solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology.
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic
and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne
researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities,
and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific
problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for
a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed
by UChicago
Argonne, LLC for
the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office
of Science.
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