IBM Sequoia
Encyclopedia
Sequoia is a petascale
Blue Gene/Q supercomputer
being constructed by IBM
for the National Nuclear Security Administration
as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
(ASC). It is scheduled to be delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in 2011 and fully deployed in 2012.
Sequoia was revealed in February 2009; the targeted performance of 20 petaflops was more than the combined performance of the top 500
supercomputers in the world and about 20 times faster than Roadrunner, the reigning champion of the time. It will be twice as fast as the current record-holding K computer
and also twice as fast as the intended future performance of Pleiades
.
supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sequoia will also be available for scientific purposes like astronomy, energy, studying of the human genome, and climate change.
memory in 96 racks covering an area of about 3000 square feet (278.7 m²). The processors are to be 16- or 8-core Power Architecture
processors built on a 45 nm fabrication process.
as the parallel filesystem, and has ported ZFS
to Linux as the Lustre OSD (Object Storage Device) to take advantage of the performance and advanced features of the filesystem.
In Sept 2011, NetApp announced that DoE
has selected the company for 55 PB of storage.
. The Sequoia design will perform 3000 Mflops/watt, about 7 times as efficient as the Blue Gene/P design it is replacing, and more than 3 times as efficient as the current (as of June 2011) Top 500 leader.
Petascale
In computing, petascale refers to a computer system capable of reaching performance in excess of one petaflop, i.e. one quadrillion floating point operations per second. The standard benchmark tool is LINPACK and Top500.org is the organisation which tracks the fastest supercomputers...
Blue Gene/Q supercomputer
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...
being constructed by 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...
for 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...
as part 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). It is scheduled to be delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
in 2011 and fully deployed in 2012.
Sequoia was revealed in February 2009; the targeted performance of 20 petaflops was more than the combined performance of the top 500
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...
supercomputers in the world and about 20 times faster than Roadrunner, the reigning champion of the time. It will be twice as fast as the current record-holding K computer
K computer
The K computer – named for the Japanese word , which stands for 10 quadrillion – is a supercomputer being produced by Fujitsu at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus in Kobe, Japan. In June 2011, TOP500 ranked K the world's fastest supercomputer, with a rating...
and also twice as fast as the intended future performance of Pleiades
Pleiades (supercomputer)
Pleiades is a petascale supercomputer built by SGI at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. , it was the world's seventh fastest computer with a peak performance of more than 970 teraflops. After further extensions, Pleiades is scheduled to reach 10 petaflops in 2012.-See...
.
Dawn prototype
IBM has also built a smaller prototype called "Dawn," capable of 500 teraflops, using the Blue Gene/P design, to evaluate the Sequoia design. This system was delivered in April 2009 and entered the Top500 list at 9th place in June 2009.Purpose
Sequoia will be used primarily for nuclear weapons simulation, replacing the current Blue Gene/L and ASC PurpleASC Purple
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...
supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sequoia will also be available for scientific purposes like astronomy, energy, studying of the human genome, and climate change.
Node architecture
Sequoia will be of Blue Gene/Q design, building off previous Blue Gene designs. It will consist of 98,304 compute nodes comprising 1.6 million processor cores and 1.6 PBPetabyte
A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...
memory in 96 racks covering an area of about 3000 square feet (278.7 m²). The processors are to be 16- or 8-core Power Architecture
Power Architecture
Power Architecture is a broad term to describe similar RISC instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale, AMCC, Tundra and P.A. Semi...
processors built on a 45 nm fabrication process.
Job scheduler
LLNL is going to use the SLURM job scheduler, which is also used by the Dawn prototype and China's Tianhe-IA, to manage Sequoia's resources.Filesystem
LLNL plans to deploy LustreLustre (file system)
Lustre is a massively parallel distributed file system, generally used for large scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a portmanteau word derived from Linux and cluster...
as the parallel filesystem, and has ported ZFS
ZFS
In computing, ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include data integrity verification against data corruption modes , support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management,...
to Linux as the Lustre OSD (Object Storage Device) to take advantage of the performance and advanced features of the filesystem.
In Sept 2011, NetApp announced that DoE
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...
has selected the company for 55 PB of storage.
Power usage
The complete system will draw about 6 MW of power but is projected to have an unprecedented efficiency in performance per wattPerformance per watt
In computing, performance per watt is a measure of the energy efficiency of a particular computer architecture or computer hardware. Literally, it measures the rate of computation that can be delivered by a computer for every watt of power consumed....
. The Sequoia design will perform 3000 Mflops/watt, about 7 times as efficient as the Blue Gene/P design it is replacing, and more than 3 times as efficient as the current (as of June 2011) Top 500 leader.