Other Directory Sites: SeekWonder | Directory Owners Forum
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:06 ADT
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Fri, 3 Jul 1998 08:11:02 -0400
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Los Alamos mail-order supercomputer among world's fastest
>
> LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 18, 1998 - A supercomputer built from ordinary
>personal computer components is among the 500 fastest computers in the
>world, an international survey reported today.
>
> The Avalon computer cost just $150,000 to build, and can compute more
>than 20 billion mathematical operations in a second, said Michael Warren
>of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical Astrophysics Group.
>
> Avalon made the 315th spot on the 11th TOP500 list released at the
>Supercomputer '98 conference in Mannheim, Germany. The list is the
>best-known ranking of supercomputer performance.
>
> "It's now possible for a small group of motivated people to design and
>build their own parallel supercomputer using off-the-shelf computer parts
>and easily available software," Warren said. "Only a handful of companies
>in the world produce a computer this fast, and the least expensive costs
>well over a million dollars."
>
> Avalon is built out of 68 high-end personal computers that use the
>Digital Equipment Corporation Alpha microprocessor, connected by 3Com
>network switches similar to those found in a university department or
>small business. Each processor in the Los Alamos supercomputer is an
>ordinary PC, using the same type of memory and disk drives found in a
>computer on an office desktop.
>
> "Each of these processors theoretically is capable of performing over one
>billion operations a second, and we bought them at consumer prices," said
>Warren.
>
> But hardware is only half of the equation. Software is the hardest part
>of getting many processors to work together on the same problem. The Los
>Alamos team used an open source Linux operating system and other software
>available on the Internet.
>
> "The key to the success of these machines lies in their software, and the
>most important part of that software is the Linux operating system,"
>Warren explained. "Linux can be obtained at no cost through the
>
> Internet, but that is minor compared to its other advantages. In my
>experience, the reliability and performance of Linux has no peer.
>
> "We have stressed Linux well beyond where one would expect it to fail,
>and it has performed admirably. Because it was developed as open source
>software, we can go to the source code and fix many problems immediately,"
>Warren continued. "If we can't fix it ourselves, we can tap the huge pool
>of Linux expertise on the Internet."
>
> While some question the reliability, complexity and difficulty of
>installing software on a "do-it-yourself" supercomputer, Warren and his
>team had no problems.
>
> "We got most of the parts for Avalon on Friday, April 10. Three days
>later, the machine was computing at over 10 billion operations per
>second." he said.
>
> By Wednesday, which was the deadline for TOP500 list entries, Avalon had
>achieved 19.2 billion floating point operations per second. The computer
>hasn't suffered a single hardware failure or operating system crash on any
>of the 68 processors during the last six weeks.
>
> Working with Warren to build Avalon were David Neal, systems
>administrator for Los Alamos' Center for Nonlinear Studies, and David
>Moulton and Aric Hagberg, both from the Mathematical Modeling and Analysis
>Group.
>
> In its short life, Avalon already has performed some significant
>scientific computations.
>
> One of the first simulations followed the evolution of a shock wave
>through 60 million atoms. The simulation ran for more than 300 hours on
>Avalon, calculating about 10 billion floating point operations per second.
>
> Physicist Peter Lomdahl, who won the Gordon Bell prize for significant
>achievement in parallel processing using the Connection Machine 5
>supercomputer at Los Alamos said the Avalon system was extremely easy to
>use.
>
> "We ported our molecular dynamics code over in about a day and have been
>able to perform state-of-the-art simulations of shock-waves in metals that
>ordinarily would have required the Lab's large-scale
>
> shared-memory parallel systems" Lomdahl said. "Not only does the Avalon
>system run slightly faster than a similarly sized commercial system, it
>does it at a tenth of the cost, and is much easier to use."Warren will use
>the machine in his computational astrophysics research, performing
>simulations of galaxies.
>
> "I am interested in simulating the evolution of the universe from its
>very early stages up to the present day," Warren said. "We can test
>different ideas about the way the universe is put together by comparing
>the galaxies simulated inside the computer with real observations made by
>the latest generation of telescopes. Avalon puts the computational power
>we need to do those simulations inside our own building, at a price we can
>afford."
>
> In its "spare time," Avalon helped crack the Certicom Elliptic Curve
>Cryptosystem challenge, winning a $4,000 prize that was donated to the
>Free Software Foundation. The Foundation led the development of many of
>the software tools Avalon uses.
>
> The code-breaking calculations ran at the same time as other large
>simulations, but only made progress when the computer didn't have anything
>else to do.
>
> Initial funds to buy and build Avalon came from the Center for Nonlinear
>Studies. Other funding came from the Laboratory Directed Research and
>Development program and the Theoretical Division. Shi-yi Chen, deputy
>leader of the Center for Nonlinear Studies, said "Avalon will be used for
>fundamental researches in nonlinear sciences for a variety of areas,
>including applied mathematics, material sciences, complex systems and
>climate modeling."
>
> Warren has used parallel computers throughout his career, including
>several which have held records as world's fastest at the time. In 1996,
>he built his first off-the shelf computer, Loki, which last year won the
>Gordon Bell prize in the "price to performance" category.
>
> "Loki proved itself as the most cost-effective way to perform large-scale
>scientific simulations last year, and now Avalon provides ten times that
>performance for only three times the price," Warren said.
>
> Computers using off-the-shelf technology like Loki and Avalon are called
>"Beowulf" computers, after the project begun by Thomas Sterling at the
>NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
>
> "Avalon is a dramatic demonstration of the long-term potential of the
>Beowulf model for scalable, high-end computing to perform real-world
>applications in science and engineering at unprecedented price-to-
>performance ratios," Sterling said. "Since 1994 when the earliest Beowulf
>systems were developed at
>
> NASA, a rapidly growing community world-wide has emerged to apply the
>Beowulf approach to a broad range of important problems.
>
> "Avalon represents a new generation of Beowulf systems -- breaking new
>ground in performance and extending their utility to new and important
>areas," Sterling said.
>
> Warren thinks that Avalon's success is only the beginning.
>
> "In the future, I imagine hundreds or thousands of machines of this type,
>working on important science, engineering and business problems," he said.
>"You will probably never hear about those computers, because they are
>simply a tool; the problems that they solve and the progress they enable
>is the important news."
>
> More information about Avalon is available at the following URL on the
>World Wide Web: http://cnls.lanl.gov/avalon
>
> Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of
>California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> News releases
>
> Public Affairs Office (PAO)
http://www.lanl.gov/external/news/releases/archive/98-089.html
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The Philodox Symposium on Digital Bearer Transaction Settlement
July 23-24, 1998: <http://www.philodox.com/symposiuminfo.html>
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:06 ADT