Overview of Recent Supercomputers

Aad J. van der Steen

and

Jack J. Dongarra

Abstract:

In this report we give an overview of high-performance computers which are currently available or will become available within a short time frame from vendors; no attempt is made to list all machines that are still in the research phase. The machines are described according to their architectural class. Shared and distributed-memory SIMD and MIMD machines are discerned. The information about each machine is kept as compact as possible. Moreover, no attempt is made to quote price information as this is often even more elusive than the performance of a system. In addition, some general information about high-performance computer architectures and the various processor employed in these systems is given in order to better appreciate the system information given in this report.

This document reflects the technical state of the supercomputer arena as accurately as possible. However, the authors nor their employers take any responsibility for errors or mistakes in this document. We encourage anyone who has comments or remarks on the contents to inform us, so we can improve this work.

• Contents
• Introduction and account
• The Main Architectural Classes
  • Shared-memory SIMD machines
  • Distributed-memory SIMD machines
  • Shared-memory MIMD machines
  • Distributed-memory MIMD machines
  • ccNUMA machines
  • Clusters
  • Processors
    • AMD Opteron
    • Compaq Alpha EV7
    • Hewlett Packard PA-RISC 8800
    • IBM POWER4+
    • IBM POWER5
    • IBM BlueGene processor
    • Intel Itanium 2
    • Intel Pentium 4/Xeon Nocona
    • MIPS R16000
    • Sun UltraSPARC IV
  • Networks
    • Infiniband
    • Myrinet
    • QsNet
    • SCI
• Recount of the (almost) available systems
  • System descriptions
    • The Bull NovaScale.
    • The C-DAC PARAM Padma.
    • The Cray Inc. MTA.
    • The Cray SX-6.
    • The Cray Inc. X1.
    • The Cray Inc. XD1.
    • The Fujitsu/Siemens PRIMEPOWER.
    • The Hitachi SR11000.
    • The HP 9000 SuperDome.
    • The HP Integrity SuperDome.
    • The HP/Compaq GS Series.
    • The HP/Compaq AlphaServer SC45 Series.
    • The IBM eServer p690.
    • The IBM BlueGene/L.
    • The NEC SX-6.
    • The NEC TX-7 series.
    • The Quadrics Apemille.
    • The SGI Altix 3000 series.
    • The SGI Origin3900.
    • The Sun Fire E25K.
    • The Unisys Server ES7000.
• Systems Disappeared from the List.
• Systems under development.
• Glossary of terms.
• Acknowledgments.
• References.
• About this document ...