A TeraFLOP supercomputer in 1996: the ASCI TFLOP system

Author

Mattson, Timothy G. ; Scott, David ; Wheat, Stephen

Author_Institution

Enterprise Server Group, Intel Corp., Beaverton, OR, USA

fYear

1996

fDate

15-19 Apr 1996

Firstpage

84

Lastpage

93

Abstract

To maintain the integrity of the US nuclear stockpile without detonating nuclear weapons, the DOE needs the results of computer-simulations that overwhelm the world´s most powerful supercomputers. Responding to this need, the US Department of Energy (DOE) initiated the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). This program accelerates the development of new scalable supercomputers resulting in a TeraFLOP computer before the end of 1996. In September 1995, DOE announced that it would work with Intel Corporation to build the ASCI TFLOP supercomputer. This system would use commodity commercial off-the-shelf (CCOTS) components to keep the price under control and would contain over 9000 Intel Pentium Pro processors. In this paper, we describe the hardware and software design of this supercomputer

Keywords

government data processing; military computing; multiprocessing systems; weapons; ASCI TFLOP system; Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative; Intel Pentium Pro processors; TeraFLOP supercomputer; US Department of Energy; US nuclear stockpile integrity maintenance; commodity commercial off-the-shelf components; nuclear weapons; price control; scalable supercomputers; Acceleration; Control systems; Costs; Hardware; Laboratories; Nuclear weapons; Software design; Supercomputers; Testing; US Department of Energy;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Parallel Processing Symposium, 1996., Proceedings of IPPS '96, The 10th International

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7255-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPPS.1996.508043

Filename

508043