Quadrics
Encyclopedia
Quadrics was a supercomputer
company formed in 1996 as a joint venture between Alenia Spazio and the technical team from Meiko Scientific
. They produced hardware and software for clustering commodity computer systems into massively parallel
systems. Their highpoint was in June 2003 when six out of the ten fastest supercomputers in the world were based on Quadrics' interconnect. They officially closed on June 29, 2009.
SIMD
parallel computer produced by Alenia Spazio and originally developed by INFN
, the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics. In 1996, a new Alenia subsidiary, Quadrics Supercomputers World (QSW) was formed, based in Bristol
, UK and Rome, Italy, inheriting the Quadrics SIMD product line and the Meiko CS-2
massively parallel
supercomputer architecture. In 2002 the company name was shortened to be simply Quadrics.
Initially, the new company focussed on the development potential of the CS-2's processor interconnect technology. Their first design was the Elan2 network ASIC
, intended for use with the UltraSPARC
CPU, attached to it using the UPA
system bus. Plans to introduce the Elan2 were later dropped, and a new Elan3 hosted on PCI
introduced instead. By the time of its release Elan3 had been re-aimed at the Alpha
/PCI
market instead, after Quadrics had formed a relationship with DEC
.
The combination of Quadrics and Alpha 21264
(EV6) microprocessors proved very successful, and Digital/Compaq rapidly became one of the world's largest suppliers of supercomputers. This culminated with the building the largest machine in the USA, the 20 TFLOP ASCI Q
, installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory
during 2002 and 2003. The machine consisted of 2,048 AlphaServer
SC nodes (which are based on AlphaServer ES45), each with four 1.25 GHz Alpha 21264A (EV67) microprocessors and two rails of the Quadrics QsNet network.
Quadrics also had success in selling Linux
based systems. Quadrics' first Linux based system was installed in June/July 2001 at SHARCNET. It was the fastest civilian system in Canada
at the time of installation. Another high profile Quadrics system was the fastest Linux cluster in the world called Thunder installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in 2003/2004, Thunder consisted of 1024 Intel Tiger Quad Itanium II Processor servers to deliver 19.94 teraflops
on parallel Linpack. Peak performance of the system was 22.9 teraflops, at a level of efficiency of 87%.
In 2004 Quadrics was selected by Bull
for what will be the fastest supercomputer in Europe: TERA-10
at the French CEA
: 544 Bull NovaScale 6160 computing nodes, each including eight Itanium 2 processors. The global configuration will feature 8,704 processors with 27 terabytes of core memory. Each of these computing nodes will contain multiple Quadrics QsNetII (Elan4) network adapters to deliver over 60 teraflops (sixty thousands billions of operations per second).
Quadrics was selected by HP
for the upgrade of SHARCNET, the Canadian Cluster of Clusters, with four new high-performance computing clusters that would increase the network's capacity from 1,000 to 6,000 processors. QsNetII was used for one capacity and one capability cluster.
In August 2005 Quadrics and STMicroelectronics
signed a development agreement. The cooperation will cover the design of a future generations of Quadrics high speed multi gigabit interconnect, and the exploitation of the products in a range of high volume applications.
The decision to close the company was made in April 2009, despite the next-generation QsNetIII product being very close to completion. Support for older products and the IP rights were transferred to Vega UK Ltd, and the Quadrics offices were closed on June 29, 2009.
, called QsTenG. The first QsTenG switch was an 8U chassis with 12 slots for 10 GigE line cards, making 96 ports in total. Each line card had eight 10 GigE ports that connect using 10GBASE-CX4 connectors. Each line card also had four internal ports that connected the line cards together into a fat tree configuration. Since then, Quadrics have brought out a second generation of 10 GigE switches, starting with a compact 1U switch with 24 ports, which comes in two variants, TG201-CA, 24 ports CX4, and TG201-XA, 24 ports in total, 12 XSP and 12 CX4. They were expected to bring out a range of larger switches in 2009, the chassis was planned to be the same as the QsNetIII, the switch to have been called TG215.
Part Numbers explanation:
TG: Ten Gigabit;
2: Second Generation;
01: number of line cards per chassis.
Late in 2007, the Quadrics management decided to cancel the QsTenG Ethernet developments and concentrate efforts on the QsNet
product line. This caused a group employees to leave and help found Gnodal, to develop large scalable Ethernet systems.
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...
company formed in 1996 as a joint venture between Alenia Spazio and the technical team from Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer microprocessor.-History:...
. They produced hardware and software for clustering commodity computer systems into massively parallel
Massively parallel
Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life sciences, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself,...
systems. Their highpoint was in June 2003 when six out of the ten fastest supercomputers in the world were based on Quadrics' interconnect. They officially closed on June 29, 2009.
Company history
The Quadrics name was first used in 1993 for a commercialized version of the APE100APE100
APE100 was a family of SIMD supercomputers developed by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy between 1989 and 1994. The systems were developed to study the structure of elementary particles by means of lattice gauge theories, especially quantum chromodynamics.APE , an acronym for...
SIMD
SIMD
Single instruction, multiple data , is a class of parallel computers in Flynn's taxonomy. It describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously...
parallel computer produced by Alenia Spazio and originally developed by INFN
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare is the coordinating institution for nuclear, particle and astroparticle physics in Italy. It was founded on the 8th of August 1951, to further the nuclear physics research tradition initiated by Enrico Fermi in Rome, in the 1930s...
, the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics. In 1996, a new Alenia subsidiary, Quadrics Supercomputers World (QSW) was formed, based in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, UK and Rome, Italy, inheriting the Quadrics SIMD product line and the Meiko CS-2
Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer microprocessor.-History:...
massively parallel
Massively parallel
Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life sciences, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself,...
supercomputer architecture. In 2002 the company name was shortened to be simply Quadrics.
Initially, the new company focussed on the development potential of the CS-2's processor interconnect technology. Their first design was the Elan2 network ASIC
ASIC
ASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...
, intended for use with the UltraSPARC
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems who is now a part of Oracle Corporation and fabricated by Texas Instruments that implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture . It was introduced in mid-1995. It was the first microprocessor from Sun Microsystems to implement...
CPU, attached to it using the UPA
Ultra Port Architecture
The Ultra Port Architecture bus was developed by Sun Microsystems as a high-speed graphics card to CPU interconnect, beginning with the Ultra 1 workstation in 1995.-External links:*...
system bus. Plans to introduce the Elan2 were later dropped, and a new Elan3 hosted on PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
introduced instead. By the time of its release Elan3 had been re-aimed at the Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
/PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
market instead, after Quadrics had formed a relationship with DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
.
The combination of Quadrics and Alpha 21264
Alpha 21264
The Alpha 21264 was a Digital Equipment Corporation RISC microprocessor introduced in October, 1996. The 21264 implemented the Alpha instruction set architecture .- Description :...
(EV6) microprocessors proved very successful, and Digital/Compaq rapidly became one of the world's largest suppliers of supercomputers. This culminated with the building the largest machine in the USA, the 20 TFLOP ASCI Q
ASCI Q
The ASCI Q was a supercomputer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, installed in 2003. It was a DEC AlphaServer SC45/GS Cluster and reached 7.727 Teraflops....
, installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
during 2002 and 2003. The machine consisted of 2,048 AlphaServer
AlphaServer
AlphaServer was the name given to a series of server computers, produced from 1994 onwards by Digital Equipment Corporation, and latterly by Compaq and HP. As the name suggests, the AlphaServers were based on the DEC Alpha 64-bit microprocessor...
SC nodes (which are based on AlphaServer ES45), each with four 1.25 GHz Alpha 21264A (EV67) microprocessors and two rails of the Quadrics QsNet network.
Quadrics also had success in selling Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
based systems. Quadrics' first Linux based system was installed in June/July 2001 at SHARCNET. It was the fastest civilian system in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
at the time of installation. Another high profile Quadrics system was the fastest Linux cluster in the world called Thunder installed at 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 2003/2004, Thunder consisted of 1024 Intel Tiger Quad Itanium II Processor servers to deliver 19.94 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...
on parallel Linpack. Peak performance of the system was 22.9 teraflops, at a level of efficiency of 87%.
In 2004 Quadrics was selected by Bull
Groupe Bull
-External links:* * — Friends, co-workers and former employees of Bull and Honeywell* *...
for what will be the fastest supercomputer in Europe: TERA-10
Tera-10
TERA-10 is a supercomputer built by Bull SA for the French Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, .According to the TOP500 list , it is currently the 142nd fastest computer in the world running at 52.84 teraFLOPs using nearly 10,000 processor cores...
at the French CEA
Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique
The Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives or CEA, is a French “public establishment related to industrial and commercial activities” whose mission is to develop all applications of nuclear power, both civilian and military...
: 544 Bull NovaScale 6160 computing nodes, each including eight Itanium 2 processors. The global configuration will feature 8,704 processors with 27 terabytes of core memory. Each of these computing nodes will contain multiple Quadrics QsNetII (Elan4) network adapters to deliver over 60 teraflops (sixty thousands billions of operations per second).
Quadrics was selected by HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
for the upgrade of SHARCNET, the Canadian Cluster of Clusters, with four new high-performance computing clusters that would increase the network's capacity from 1,000 to 6,000 processors. QsNetII was used for one capacity and one capability cluster.
In August 2005 Quadrics and STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics is an Italian-French electronics and semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is registered in Amsterdam,...
signed a development agreement. The cooperation will cover the design of a future generations of Quadrics high speed multi gigabit interconnect, and the exploitation of the products in a range of high volume applications.
The decision to close the company was made in April 2009, despite the next-generation QsNetIII product being very close to completion. Support for older products and the IP rights were transferred to Vega UK Ltd, and the Quadrics offices were closed on June 29, 2009.
Hardware
- Quadrics QsNetIQsNetQsNet is a high speed interconnect designed by Quadrics used in HPC clusters, particularly Linux Beowulf Clusters. Although it can be used with TCP/IP; like SCI, Myrinet and Infiniband it is usually used with a communication API such as MPI or SHMEM called from a parallel program.The interconnect...
- HPC interconnect based around the elan3/elite3 ASICs (350MBs @ 5us MPI latency) - Quadrics QsNetIIQsNet IIQsNet II is the latest generation of Quadrics Interconnect family products.Quadrics QsNetII interfaces to the host computer through the standard IO PCI-X bus.-Architecture:...
- HPC interconnect based around the elan4/elite4 ASICs (912MB/s on SR1400 EM64T and 1.26us MPI latency on HP DL145G2) - QsTenG - 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, from 24-port (1U) to very large switches.
- Quadrics QsNetIII - HPC interconnect based around the elan5/elite5 ASICs (approximately 2 GB/s each direction and 1.3 us MPI latency). This is the first product from Quadrics that is compatible with a standard - in this case 10 GBit Ethernet.
QsTenG
In Nov 2005 Quadrics announced a new product based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet10 Gigabit Ethernet
The 10 gigabit Ethernet computer networking standard was first published in 2002. It defines a version of Ethernet with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s , ten times faster than gigabit Ethernet.10 gigabit Ethernet defines only full duplex point to point links which are generally connected by...
, called QsTenG. The first QsTenG switch was an 8U chassis with 12 slots for 10 GigE line cards, making 96 ports in total. Each line card had eight 10 GigE ports that connect using 10GBASE-CX4 connectors. Each line card also had four internal ports that connected the line cards together into a fat tree configuration. Since then, Quadrics have brought out a second generation of 10 GigE switches, starting with a compact 1U switch with 24 ports, which comes in two variants, TG201-CA, 24 ports CX4, and TG201-XA, 24 ports in total, 12 XSP and 12 CX4. They were expected to bring out a range of larger switches in 2009, the chassis was planned to be the same as the QsNetIII, the switch to have been called TG215.
Part Numbers explanation:
TG: Ten Gigabit;
2: Second Generation;
01: number of line cards per chassis.
Late in 2007, the Quadrics management decided to cancel the QsTenG Ethernet developments and concentrate efforts on the QsNet
QsNet
QsNet is a high speed interconnect designed by Quadrics used in HPC clusters, particularly Linux Beowulf Clusters. Although it can be used with TCP/IP; like SCI, Myrinet and Infiniband it is usually used with a communication API such as MPI or SHMEM called from a parallel program.The interconnect...
product line. This caused a group employees to leave and help found Gnodal, to develop large scalable Ethernet systems.
Software
- RMSQuadricsRmsQuadrics Software is available as RMS and Open Source-RMS and Open Source:RMS is a Cluster resource manager software package....
- a cluster resource manager software package - Quadrics Linux Software - core components of the QsNet software release for Linux under the GNU LGPL License
See also
- NUMAlinkNUMAlinkNUMAlink is a system interconnect developed by SGI for use in its distributed shared memory ccNUMA computer systems. NUMAlink was originally developed by SGI for their Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems...
- HIPPIHIPPIHIPPI is a computer bus for the attachment of high speed storage devices to supercomputers. It was popular in the late 1980s and into the mid-to-late 1990s, but has since been replaced by ever-faster standard interfaces like SCSI and Fibre Channel.The first HIPPI standard defined a 50-wire...
- InfinibandInfiniBandInfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link used in high-performance computing and enterprise data centers. Its features include high throughput, low latency, quality of service and failover, and it is designed to be scalable...
- MyrinetMyrinetMyrinet, ANSI/VITA 26-1998, is a high-speed local area networking system designed by Myricom to be used as an interconnect between multiple machines to form computer clusters. Myrinet has much lower protocol overhead than standards such as Ethernet, and therefore provides better throughput, less...
- Scalable Coherent InterconnectScalable Coherent InterconnectSCI, for Scalable Coherent Interface, is a high-speed interconnect standard for shared memory multiprocessing and message passing. The IEEE Std 1596-1992, IEEE Standard for Scalable Coherent Interface was approved by the IEEE standards board on March 19, 1992...
(SCI) - Gigabit EthernetGigabit EthernetGigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...