Officials hope Cray X1 will someday become world's fastest machine

Thomas Zacharia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's computer chief, doesn't want to say too much too soon about the Cray X1 supercomputer, but it's hard for him to conceal his enthusiasm.

"First of all, let me say the machine has been rock solid so far, which is amazing for a new machine,'' Zacharia said. "We've been extremely impressed.''

This isn't just a new computer, of course. It's a new computer with a new architecture and a new reputation all its own.

"Our IBM machines are also rock solid, but they have a track record. We are pleasantly surprised at how well this machine has stayed up,'' Zacharia said.

Evaluations currently are being performed on just a small fraction of the Cray system - a single cabinet half populated (with 32 processors).

The rest of the initial setup of eight cabinets won't arrive until ORNL completes construction of its new 40,000-square-foot computational sciences facility.

The computing center is scheduled to open in mid-June. Soon thereafter, the laboratory expects to receive three more cabinets of the Cray X1. That will be followed in late summer by additional components, ramping up to a working level.

"By the middle of September, I expect to have all eight cabinets,'' Zacharia said.

The maximum configuration of the Cray supercomputer is 64 cabinets, housing 4,096 processors. If things go as expected, the ORNL machine will eventually challenge or surpass Japan's Earth Simulator as the fastest computer in the world, now estimated at 40 trillion calculations per second.

The sturdiness of a supercomputer is as important as its calculating speed, and the early results suggest the Cray X1 has plenty of each.

Buddy Bland, who heads the laboratory's high-performance computing group, said the hardware has exceeded expectations.

"We've only had one failure since the machine was delivered (March 18). That compares to our normal system where we might have two or three failures a week, which is expected in this industry,'' Bland said.

"We're very pleased ... but Cray has a long tradition of delivering machines like that. They focus on nothing but the scientific community. I don't want to sound too much like a Cray commercial here, but I mean the reason we selected them is they have a history of doing this and doing it very well.''

Like the Earth Simulator, the Cray X1 uses what's called vector processing, but the architecture is different than the Japanese machine.

Zacharia said computer scientists at the Earth Simulator have requested a visit to Oak Ridge to check out the new Cray system.

Because of the design differences, U.S. scientists have had limited opportunities to run their computer codes at the Earth Simulator. But Zacharia said ORNL would encourage possible collaborations with the Japanese.

The fact that the Japanese are anxious to see the new Cray machine is a positive sign, the ORNL executive said.

One version of a computer code for climate change that was modified to run on the Earth Simulator has also been evaluated on the Cray X1. "That suggests we can leverage and learn from each,'' Zacharia said.

Oak Ridge wouldn't have been approved as the U.S. lab to challenge the Japanese for world computing superiority if it wasn't for the new building, which offers the specialized infrastructure needed for top-level research.

Chips in the high-powered Cray machine are sprayed with a nonconductive liquid called Fluorinert, and chilled water is needed in significant amounts to cool that coolant and maintain a constant temperature in the cabinets housing the processors.

The single cabinet now installed at ORNL requires 33 gallons of water per minute, and once the configuration reaches 50 cabinets, fully loaded, the needs will grow to about 1,600 gallons of chilled water per minute. The new computer building will use as much chilled water as the rest of the lab research facilities combined.

The first eight-cabinet supercomputer, half-loaded, is costing about $30 million, and depending on funding in fiscal 2004, ORNL may boost the cabinets to full capacity (64 processors in each), Zacharia said. That would cost another $20 million or so, he said.

Currently, ORNL specialists are using the first cabinet of the Cray system to evaluate algorithms from a number of lab research programs, ranging from climate change to computational biology.

Zacharia is particularly excited about the X1's potential for doing biological research.

Cray historically has built computers for the government's national security agencies, which use the machines to sift through mountains of data for key intelligence information, the ORNL official said.

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack,'' Zacharia said. "Because of those needs, Cray has some built-in hardware features that allow you to do pattern searching.''

That same capability should prove valuable when scientists look for biological patterns, such as how proteins fold in order to initiate body functions, he said.

Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329 or munger@knews.com. This column also is available online at Knoxnews.com.


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		URL: http://www.csm.ornl.gov/PR/NS05-19-03.html Updated: Wednesday, 21-May-2003 13:06:05 EDT webmaster