ASC Purple
Encyclopedia
ASC Purple was a supercomputer
installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA. The computer was a collaboration between IBM
Corporation and Lawrence Livermore Lab. Announced November 19th, 2002, it was installed in July 2005 and decommissioned on November 10th, 2010. The contract for this computer along with the Blue Gene/L
supercomputer was worth US $290 million. As of November 2009, the computer ranked 66th on the TOP500
supercomputer list.
It was a redundant ring of IBM POWER5
SMP
servers. 196 of these servers machines were connected together. The system contained 12,544 POWER5 microprocessor
s in total with 50 terabyte
s of total memory and 2 petabyte
s of total disk storage. The system ran IBM's AIX
5L operating system
. The computer consumed 7.5 MW of electricity, including cooling. It has a theoretical processing speed of 100 teraflops
.
It was built as stage five of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
(ASC) started by the U.S. Department of Energy
and the National Nuclear Security Administration
to build a simulator to replace live WMD
testing following the moratorium
on testing started by President
George H. W. Bush
in 1992 and extended by Bill Clinton
in 1993.
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA. The computer was a collaboration between IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
Corporation and Lawrence Livermore Lab. Announced November 19th, 2002, it was installed in July 2005 and decommissioned on November 10th, 2010. The contract for this computer along with the Blue Gene/L
Blue Gene
Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce several supercomputers, designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS . It is a cooperative project among IBM Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce...
supercomputer was worth US $290 million. As of November 2009, the computer ranked 66th on the TOP500
TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
supercomputer list.
It was a redundant ring of IBM POWER5
IBM POWER
POWER is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
SMP
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
servers. 196 of these servers machines were connected together. The system contained 12,544 POWER5 microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
s in total with 50 terabyte
Terabyte
The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...
s of total memory and 2 petabyte
Petabyte
A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...
s of total disk storage. The system ran IBM's AIX
AIX operating system
AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...
5L operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
. The computer consumed 7.5 MW of electricity, including cooling. It has a theoretical processing speed of 100 teraflops
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
.
It was built as stage five of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
The Advanced Simulation and Computing Program is a supercomputing initiative of the United States government, created to help the maintenance of the United States nuclear arsenal after the 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing.Some of the program's supercomputers are on the TOP500...
(ASC) started by the U.S. Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
and the National Nuclear Security Administration
National Nuclear Security Administration
The United States National Nuclear Security Administration is part of the United States Department of Energy. It works to improve national security through the military application of nuclear energy...
to build a simulator to replace live WMD
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
testing following the moratorium
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 September 1996 but it has not entered into force.-Status:...
on testing started by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
in 1992 and extended by Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
in 1993.