Red Storm (computing)
Encyclopedia
Red Storm is a supercomputer
architecture designed for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
. Cray, Inc developed it based on the contracted architectural specifications provided by Sandia National Laboratories
. The architecture was later commercially produced as the
Cray XT3
.
Red Storm is a partitioned, space shared, tightly coupled, massively parallel
processing machine with a high performance 3D mesh network. The processors are commodity AMD Opteron
CPUs with off-the-shelf memory DIMM
s. The NIC/router combination, called SeaStar, is the only custom ASIC
component in the system and uses a PowerPC 440 based core. When deployed in 2005, Red Storm’s initial configuration consisted of 10,880 single-core 2.0 GHz Opterons, of which 10,368 were dedicated for scientific calculations. The remaining 512 Opterons were used to service the computations and also provide the user interface to the system and run a version of Linux
. This initial installation consisted of 140 cabinets, taking up 280 square metres (334.9 sq yd) of floor space.
The Red Storm supercomputer was designed to be highly scalable from a single cabinet to hundreds of cabinets and has been scaled-up twice. In 2006 the system was upgraded to 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Opterons. An additional fifth row of computer cabinets were also brought online resulting in over 26,000 processor cores. This resulted in a peak performance of 124.4 teraflops, or 101.4 running the Linpack
benchmark
.
A second major upgrade in 2008 introduced Cray XT4
technology: Quad-core Opteron processors and an increase in memory to 2 GB per core. This resulted in a peak theoretical performance of 284 teraflops.
Top 500 performance ranking for Red Storm after each upgrade:
Red Storm is intended for capability computing. That is, a single application can be run on the entire system. This is in contrast to cluster-style capacity computing, in which portions of a cluster are assigned to run different applications. The performance of the memory subsystem, the processor, and the network must be in proper balance to achieve adequate
application progress across the entire machine. System software plays a key role as well. The Portals network programming API
is used to ensure inter-processor communication can scale as large as the entire system, and has been used on many different supercomputers, including the Intel Teraflops and Paragon
. The compute processors use a custom lightweight kernel operating system named Catamount, which is based on the operating system of ASCI Red
called "Cougar"
.
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...
architecture designed for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration 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...
. Cray, Inc developed it based on the contracted architectural specifications provided by Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
. The architecture was later commercially produced as the
Cray XT3
Cray XT3
The Cray XT3 is a distributed memory massively parallel MIMD supercomputer designed by Cray Inc. with Sandia National Laboratories under the codename Red Storm. Cray turned the design into a commercial product in 2004...
.
Red Storm is a partitioned, space shared, tightly coupled, 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,...
processing machine with a high performance 3D mesh network. The processors are commodity AMD Opteron
Opteron
Opteron is AMD's x86 server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture . It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core and was intended to compete in the server and workstation markets, particularly in the same...
CPUs with off-the-shelf memory DIMM
DIMM
A DIMM or dual in-line memory module, comprises a series of dynamic random-access memory integrated circuits. These modules are mounted on a printed circuit board and designed for use in personal computers, workstations and servers...
s. The NIC/router combination, called SeaStar, is the only custom 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...
component in the system and uses a PowerPC 440 based core. When deployed in 2005, Red Storm’s initial configuration consisted of 10,880 single-core 2.0 GHz Opterons, of which 10,368 were dedicated for scientific calculations. The remaining 512 Opterons were used to service the computations and also provide the user interface to the system and run a version of 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...
. This initial installation consisted of 140 cabinets, taking up 280 square metres (334.9 sq yd) of floor space.
The Red Storm supercomputer was designed to be highly scalable from a single cabinet to hundreds of cabinets and has been scaled-up twice. In 2006 the system was upgraded to 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Opterons. An additional fifth row of computer cabinets were also brought online resulting in over 26,000 processor cores. This resulted in a peak performance of 124.4 teraflops, or 101.4 running the Linpack
LINPACK
LINPACK is a software library for performing numerical linear algebra on digital computers. It was written in Fortran by Jack Dongarra, Jim Bunch, Cleve Moler, and Gilbert Stewart, and was intended for use on supercomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s...
benchmark
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...
.
A second major upgrade in 2008 introduced Cray XT4
Cray XT4
The Cray XT4 is an updated version of the Cray XT3 supercomputer. It was released on November 18, 2006. It includes an updated version of the SeaStar interconnect router called SeaStar2, processor sockets for Socket AM2 Opteron processors, and 240-pin unbuffered DDR2 memory...
technology: Quad-core Opteron processors and an increase in memory to 2 GB per core. This resulted in a peak theoretical performance of 284 teraflops.
Top 500 performance ranking for Red Storm after each upgrade:
- November 2005: Rank 6 (36.19 TFLOPS)
- November 2006: Rank 2 (101.4 TFLOPS)
- November 2008: Rank 9 (204.2 TFLOPS)
Red Storm is intended for capability computing. That is, a single application can be run on the entire system. This is in contrast to cluster-style capacity computing, in which portions of a cluster are assigned to run different applications. The performance of the memory subsystem, the processor, and the network must be in proper balance to achieve adequate
application progress across the entire machine. System software plays a key role as well. The Portals network programming API
Portals network programming api
Portals is a low-level network API for high-performance networking on high-performance computing systems developed by Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico...
is used to ensure inter-processor communication can scale as large as the entire system, and has been used on many different supercomputers, including the Intel Teraflops and Paragon
Intel Paragon
The Intel Paragon was a series of massively parallel supercomputers produced by Intel. The Paragon XP/S was a productized version of the experimental Touchstone Delta system built at Caltech, launched in 1992. The Paragon superseded Intel's earlier iPSC/860 system, to which it was closely...
. The compute processors use a custom lightweight kernel operating system named Catamount, which is based on the operating system of ASCI Red
ASCI Red
ASCI Red was the first computer built under the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative . ASCI Red was built by Intel and installed at Sandia in late 1996. The design was based on the Intel Paragon computer...
called "Cougar"
SUNMOS
SUNMOS is an operating system jointly developed by Sandia National Laboratories and the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico...
.