Benchmarking NRL´s SGI Altix

For the past three years the Naval Research Laboratory has been evaluating the Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) Altix machine as a platform for high performance computing within the Department of Defense (DoD). This effort has been in two parts: first on systems with 1.3 GHz IA-64 processors with 3 MB cache and a NumaLink3 network architecture, and then on a system with 1.6 GHz IA-64 processors with 9 MB of cache and a NumaLink4 network architecture. As part of this work NRL has been porting both internally developed codes and the TI-05 benchmark codes to the Altix and evaluating their performance. Performance results of running codes on an Altix system with the 1.3 GHz processors and a RedHat Linux based operating system and an Altix system with 1.6 GHz processors and a SUSE based Linux based operating system are presented.