Sun HPC 10000 Server
|
Sun HPC 10000 Server
Beats SGI, HP and IBM
on Linpack Benchmark
Sun Delivered 123.9 GFLOPs Utilizing A Four-Node Cluster for
the Parallel LINPACK Benchmark /Two-Node Cluster Delivered 66.93 GFLOPs
PALO ALTO, CA. -- November 10 1998 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
today announced a significant boost in performance results for the Sun HPC 10000
(StarfireTM) server as measured by the LINPACK Benchmark, the standard by which
supercomputers are judged. The Sun HPC 10000 server running the SolarisTM operating
environment, is currently the leading architecture on the TOP 500 list of most powerful
supercomputing sites. In this recent test, the Sun HPC 10000 delivered 123.9 GFLOPs
for the Parallel LINPACK Benchmark, beating comparable systems from SGI, HP, and
IBM.
"Sun's results on the LINPACK Benchmark demonstrate the company's ability to
consistently deliver on their processor road map, and provide scalable, high-performance
solutions for the high-performance computing market," said Jack Dongarra of
the University of Tennessee and developer of the LINPACK Benchmarks. "As Sun
continues to make a serious drive toward capturing a significant portion of the
high-performance computing market, they are proving that symmetric multiprocessing
(SMP) architectures play an important role in the supercomputing arena."
Sun demonstrated 123.9 GFLOPs for the Highly Parallel Computing version of the LINPACK
Benchmark utilizing a four-node Sun HPC 10000 cluster networked with an OmniSwitch
from Xylan Corporation. The OmniSwitch network connected each of the HPC 10000's
using OC-12 ATM at 622 Megabits per second. Each system in the cluster consisted
of 64 (336 MHz) UltraSPARCTM II CPUs with 4MB external cache, 16 GB of memory and
ATM-622 connectivity. The benchmark result, which was obtained with a matrix size
of 80,640 (Nmax), represents a gain of approximately 23% over Sun's previous mark.
Theoretical peak performance for the four-node cluster solution measured 172 GFLOPs.
Sun's two-node cluster, consisting of two Sun HPC 10000 servers configured with
64 (336 MHz) UltraSPARC II CPUs with 4MB external cache, 16 GB of memory and ATM-622
connectivity, delivered a LINPACK Benchmark result of 66.93 GFLOPs with a matrix
size of 57,120 (Nmax), again, beating comparable systems from SGI, HP and IBM. Theoretical
peak performance for the two-node cluster solution measured 86 GFLOPs.
The LINPACK Benchmark is a widely used set of tests emphasizing floating point addition
and multiplication that measures the performance for solving linear equations used
in scientific and engineering environments. There are multiple metrics for each
LINPACK Benchmark, which define performance expectations and testing limitations.
The TOP 500 list uses Parallel LINPACK Benchmark performance results to rank the
most powerful computers in the world.
"Sun's commitment to providing high performance, scalable computer systems
at price/performance levels unmatched by traditional supercomputers is positioning
Sun as a leader in the HPC market," said Shahin Khan, director of marketing
for Sun Data Center and High Performance Computing. "As the HPC market continues
shifting away from proprietary supercomputer architectures toward open-system architectures
based on SMPs and clusters of SMPs, Sun's ability to consistently deliver on its
HPC strategy will assure Sun remains in the forefront."
Sun's systems strategy is to architect fat SMPs and clusters of fat SMPs. The SMP
architecture, extending from workstations to high-end servers, is a widely used
model for developing and running parallel applications. It is a proven, easy to
deploy architecture that ensures that the thousands of applications developed and
optimized for these systems will provide the optimum performance available without
modification. This model also provides a large selection of binary-compatible, technical
applications from key software vendors.
Traditionally the domain of engineers, physicists, astronomers, chemists and other
scientists, HPC is also an invaluable tool in commercial computing. Customers in
government, academic and research fields, petroleum, automotive, aerospace, electronics,
financial and business sectors utilize Sun HPC solutions to solve complex, numerically
intensive problems
Sun HPC Servers
Sun HPC compute engines are based on a highly leveraged model,
where SPARCTM technology is integrated into a family of SMP servers. The model is
highly integral to Sun's strength and continued success in the commercial arena,
especially with emerging commercial applications that are integrating with and making
use of high-performance computing techniques.
Sun's complete HPC line includes six high-performance SMP systems, the HPC 450,
3500, 4500, 5500, 6500 and Starfire servers, all running the robust Solaris operating
environment and are binary compatible with the entire SPARC processor installed
base, providing tremendous investment protection and desktop-to-teraflop scalability.
Sun's wide range of SMP systems, enables customers to choose products that fit present
needs while providing the headroom to grow as needs change. The Sun HPC servers
range in size from a four-processor Sun HPC 450 system to the 64-processor Sun HPC
10000 server.
Bundled with each Sun HPC server is the Sun HPC 2.0 software designed specifically
for compute-intensive, technical computing environments. Sun HPC 2.0 software enables
the development and execution of serial and parallelized high-performance applications.
It provides middleware to facilitate and manage the workload of highly resource-intensive
applications on Sun HPC servers, as well as clusters of these servers. Additionally,
it provides the software development environment for creating and debugging applications
that are parallelized for Sun HPC servers and clusters.
Xylan Switches
Xylan Corporation is one of the leading switching companies
in the world; its products combine LAN switching, ATM switching, layer-three switching,
and wide area switching, over a wide range of interfaces and media. Xylan's switches
are distinguished by advanced architectures and chip designs, and by any-to-any
switching. More information about Xylan and its products is available at www.xylan.com.
Sun Microsystems
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The
Network Is The ComputerTM," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., (NASDAQ:
SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of high-quality hardware, software
and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power
of the Internet. With more than $10 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found
in more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
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