The GigaBooster achieves up to 1.6 GFlops peak performance with seven Digital Alpha processors running Digital Unix. Up to 1 GBytes of main memory, and up to 45 GBytes of internal disk storage form a powerful machine which can be used for scientific computing or as a file server.

 

The Innovation High performance computing power. The GigaBooster system The GigaBooster's hardware architecture. Technical Description GigaBooster facts. The Intelligent Communication Supercomputing Systems' patented high speed communication concept. Software Since the GigaBooster runs the Digital UNIX operating system, all current programming languages can be used. The communication between the processors is realized with our native MPI implementation, with Intelligent Communication (ICI) or with TCP/IP. PVM running on top of TCP/IP is also available. Programming the GigaBooster The operating system and the communication standards. The buyer's q&a Question and answer quide for potential GigaBooster customers.

The Innovation

High computing power is provided by high performance processing nodes with fast communication management. Most parallel computer systems suffer a severe performance loss because of inappropriate communication management.

Computing intensive applications can be performed with highest speed. Moreover, by adopting conventional components, the GigaBooster offers a very competitive price/performance ratio.

  The GigaBooster system

• 1.6 GFlops peak performance
• Standard Digital UNIX environment
• Distributed memory architecture
• MPI (Message Passing Interface)
• ICI (Intelligent Communication Interface)
• Workstation Cluster and Parallel Computer in one
• Up to 1 GByte memory
• Up to 45 GBytes internal disk storage
• Only 500 W power consumption

The GigaBooster is based on 7 DEC Alpha processors, each of which runs at 233 MHz. These seven processors result in a peak performance for the GigaBooster of 1.6 GFlops. The distributed memory offers market-leading performance in a compact enclosure. Every processing node is connected to the high speed communication network, which supports not only all standard communication protocols, but also Intelligent Communication. This enables the 64 bit RISC processors to utilize their full performance with your applications. Each processing node has an independent SCSI-2 interface allowing its CPU to be equipped with its own disks and additional peripherals.

Standards were among the most important criteria when the GigaBooster was designed. In addition to use standard processors and memory modules, all peripherals use standard interaces. Four PCI slots support all possibel types of peripheral boards, e.g. FDDI, FiberChannel, ATM, FastEthernet, Fast/Wide-SCSI, framegrabber, videocards...

Communication boards for Ethernet, FDDI and ATM networks allow an easy integration of the GigaBooster into your Local Area Network.

Every aspect of the GigaBooster is designed to allow future scalability and expandability. For example, the 64 bit technology and the scalable modular platform ensure ample expandability to meet growing software requirements.

  Technical Description

Architecture:

CPU features:

Mass storage:

External interfaces:

Physical characteristics:

Software:

Interfaces:

• 4 PCI-slots
• 7 SCSI-2 interfaces
• 1 RS-232
• 1 Centronics

Standard Delivery:

• GigaBooster
• 7 MB Cache
• 128 MB DRAM
• 16 GB hard disk
• 1 CD-ROM
• 1 Ethernet card
• 1 Graphics card
• 17" Monitor
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Digital UNIX licence
• Documentation

Upgrades:

• DRAM memory upgrade to 256 MB
• DRAM memory upgrade to 512 MB
• DRAM memory upgrade to 1024 MB
• Variable internal hard disk upgrades up to 45 GB
• DAT

All information is subject to change without notice. GigaBooster, ICI, and SmartICI are trademarks of Supercomputing Systems AG. UNIX is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd. DEC, AlphaGeneration and Digital UNIX are registered trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.

  The Intelligent Communication

In a parallel system, each single processing element has to perform the following tasks:

• computing
• communication
• administration

Intelligent Communication is based on the fact that the speed of parallel computers is not mainly limited by the communication bandwith or the communication structure, but by communication administration. In conventional parallel computer design, communication administration is done by the software. Because this administration increases with the number of processing elements it becomes the bottleneck. Supercomputing Systems AG has implemented communication administration on the hardware layer. This specialized hardware takes care of all this communication administration for data parallel applications, namely the collection and distribution of data arrays among all the processing elements.

  Software

The use of the Digital UNIX operating system ensures access to the wide world of UNIX applications. All tools available for DEC UNIX & XWindows (X11R6) can be used on the GigaBooster without limitations. Use your preferred programming languages like C, C++, FOTRAN 77/90 that support PVM, MPI and ICI. The incredible power of the GigaBooster is available due to a highly sophisticated and innovative communication architecture. This leads not only to the extremely high computing speed, but also to the favorable price. Proven and inexpensive standard components, used in every single processor workstation, make it possible to offer a system which has an excellent price/performance ratio. However this is not all. The GigaBooster may be used in several ways:

  Programming the GigaBooster

Communication Standards MPI MPI is a new library specification for message-passing, proposed as a standard by a broadly based committee of vendors, implementors, and users. A native implementation (SCSMPI-V1.03) is installed on the GigaBooster. Additionally there is also a socket based implementation available. ICI ICI was designed for data-parallel programming. It uses a SPMD (Single Program Multiple Data) programming model. All nodes run the same program but calculate different parts of the data. At the start of the program, each node receives a part of the data. It performs the calculation on its part. The data is sent to the communication network after the calculation. The network distributes it to the other nodes. As soon as the nodes have received the new input data, a next calculation step begins. After all calculation steps have completed, the data is recollected. Calculation and communication can be done simultaneously. PVM PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of UNIX computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers. The software is very portable. The source, which is available free through netlib, has been compiled on everything from laptops to CRAYs. You can use PVM using the TCP/IP connections between the PEs of the GigaBooster. In doing so, you can run any parallel application running on a cluster of DEC-workstations without recompiling and with higher performance. To increase the communication performance even further we are working on a native implementation of PVM on the GigaBooster. This implementation will still allow you to use heterogeneous computers in the network, including the GigaBooster. others Since there is a TCP/IP connection between the processors of the GigaBooster, all TCP/IP based communication packages can be used. This allows the use of a large number of communication software. E.g. the High Performance Fortran Environment from Digital can be used.

Operating System Digital Unix (formerly DEC OSF/1) is the most standards compliant version of UNIX there is. It's the only commercial UNIX that delivers true 64-bit architecture, assuring what the Yankee Group terms "uninterrupted price/performance leadership in UNIX systems for the foreseeable future." Digital UNIX runs thousands of applications, and interoperates with just about everything on a company's ever-changing network. Companies get the scalability to grow as big as they want, as fast as they need to. Any application that runs on Digital UNIX will run on the GigaBooster. It is fully binary-compatible to Digital's AXPs. Languages C Digital's C compiler is included in the base license and therefore installed on every system. C++ DEC C++ for DEC OSF/1[R] AXP Systems offers a complete C++ development environment based on a robust implementation of the current language definition. Fortran 77 DEC Fortran[TM] for Digital UNIX[R] (formerly DEC OSF/1[TM]) is an implementation of full language FORTRAN-77 conforming to American National Standard FORTRAN, ANSI X3.9-1978. Fortran 90 DEC Fortran 90 for Digital UNIX[R] (formerly DEC OSF/1[TM]) Alpha Systems is an implementation of the FORTRAN programming language conforming to American National Standard FORTRAN 90 (ANSI X3.198-1992) and the International Standard ISO 1539-1991(E). The DEC Fortran 90 language supports extensions to the Fortran 90 standard including statement, library, and directive extensions from HPF (High Performance Fortran Language Specification, CRPC-TR92225, Center for Research on Parallel Computation, Rice University, 1993) and a number of extensions defined by DEC Fortran. Ada DEC Ada for DEC OSF/1 AXP is Digital Equipment Corporation's validated implementation of the full ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A-1983 Ada Language. Pascal DEC Pascal is an implementation of the Pascal[*]language that accepts programs compatible with either level of the ISO specification for Programming languages - Pascal [ISO 7185-1987] as well as ANSI/IEEE 770X3.97- 1987.

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