Curtis Boles/ORNL   Three summer college interns at Oak Ridge National Laboratory view the Cray X-1 with Buddy Bland of ORNL, while touring the new computational sciences center. From left are Jennifer Lilly of Tennessee Tech, and Erica Sherritze and Stephanie Barnes of the University of Tennessee.

Cray X-1 living up to lab's high hopes

New digs: The lab is adding exponentially to its supercomputer stable, and hopes are high funding will continue to fall into place.

By: R. Cathey Daniels | Oak Ridger Staff cathey.daniels@oakridger.com

Supercomputing capability at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is growing exponentially.

Recently a second console for the Cray X-1 configuration - expected to one day challenge for top honors in the supercomputing world - was installed in the new 40,000 square-foot computational sciences center (see related story).

Next week two more Cray cabinets will be added.

"Then in August and September we will get four more, so that by the end of September we will have 256 processors, which will be the largest Cray X-1 in the world," said Buddy Bland, director of operations for computational sciences, on a recent tour of his new digs at the lab.

If 2004 funding falls into place, two more cabinets will be added next year, pushing the lab's capability to 640 Cray processors. The intention is to eventually populate the ORNL center with 50 Cray X-1 cabinets, which would far outstrip Japan's Earth Simulator, currently the fastest computer in the world at about 35 trillion calculations per second.

But that will take commitment from the Bush Administration and Congress.

Expected funding for 2003 was $100 million for supercomputing, but only $14 million came through.

Office of Science Director Ray Orbach, who in 2002 called for support of about $300 million annually, said that he fully expects better budget results in the coming years.

"It's beginning to happen, I think you will see substantial support in the future," said Orbach, in a recent interview at ORNL. "Oak Ridge, because of the investment of UT-Battelle and the state of Tennessee, has created a computational center no one else has.

"There's no guarantees, but that's a powerful argument for the future being right here."

Orbach said that the 2004 house mark, $213.5 million for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research initiative, is about $40 million above the president's request.

The lab's IBM Cheetah, which runs about 2.3 trillion operations per second, currently ranks 18th in the world, a slip of about 10 places from June, 2002, according to the Top 500 List. According to Jack Dongarra, who publishes the list twice a year, computer power can be expected to double approximately every 18 months.

"So there's an ever-changing definition of supercomputer," said Dongarra, a distinguished professor at the University of Tennessee with an adjunct position at ORNL.

"I have in front of me right now a laptop standard IBM - it would have been on the Top 500 List just a few years ago," said Dongarra.

Orbach said his primary concern is whether the Department of Energy's computers can help scientists solve problems.

"It's not just some arbitrary speed or some other criteria, but rather, can they do the science," said Orbach. "What we want to do is put together the components so they solve the problems we want to solve."

"So far we've been very, very, very pleased," said Bland of the Cray's performance. "It is running exceptionally well, three to five times faster - and at times 10 times faster - than we were getting with the Cheetah, and that's exactly the type of results we were hoping to find."

Asked whether the United States will overtake Japan, Orbach said, "It's not such an easy thing, you've got to give the Japanese credit. But we'll get there."

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