Communications of the ACM
World's Most Efficient Supercomputer Gets to Work
JAXA
The new Fujitsu FX1 supercomputer in Japan has a peak performance of 110.6 teraflops, making it the most powerful machine in Japan and the most efficient supercomputer in the world. It was inaugerated earlier this month by the Japan Aerospace Explorations Agency (JAXA) at the Chofu Space Center in western Tokyo (pictured). Its peak performance when running the Linpack benchmark represents 91.2 percent of its theoretical performance of 120 teraflops, and outperforms the previous record holder, a machine at the Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Munich, Germany. The Fujitsu FX1 has 3,008 nodes, each of which has a 4-core Sparc64 VII multiprocessor and 94 terabytes of memory.
In addition to the previous, less powerful FX1 supercomputer, the facility that hosts the new FX1 also has an NEC SX-9 vector computer for specialized tasks. In total, a petabyte of disk storage space and 10 petabytes of tape storage are available. The machine will be used by Japan's Aerospace Explorations Agency to simulate the launch of spacecraft to help engineers properly insulate payloads to prevent the vibrations and noises that occur during launch from damaging satellites before they can be deployed.
The new computer will help researchers capture frequencies of 150 Hz to 200 Hz, which was difficult to do on the previous computer. Fujitsu says the high efficiency of the machine is due to the high-performance hardware, the Parallelnavi middleware used in the system, and the expertise of the system's builders.
From IDG News Service
View Full Article
No entries found