Remember “Cherry Creek,” the Intel-designed supercomputer that ran for the duration of SC13 Supercomputing Conference? This “demonstration” system achieved a 400 ranking on that November’s TOP500 list based on a Linpack performance of 131.5 teraflops and a 41st ranking on the subsequent Green500.
Intel built the supercomputer in partnership with Supermicro and Bright Computing as an exercise in using readily available, off-the-shelf components to construct and deploy a TOP500-class computer.
Now just weeks before SC14 kicks off in New Orleans, Cherry Creek is on its way to Las Vegas, thanks to an agreement between Switch SUPERNAP, Intel and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). The supercomputer will be housed in Switch’s Las Vegas SUPERNAP datacenter, and UNLV researchers will have access through SUPERNAP’s connectivity network.
Officials at the school expect that having access to this leadership-class machine will “act as a catalyst for scientific discovery, the modernization of applications, and regional economic development efforts.” Among the fields that will benefit most are genomics, bioinformatics, climate research, molecular modeling, and data analytics. Additionally, a portion of the machine’s processing power will be allocated to private sector research through a partnership between UNLV and Switch.
“Supercomputers have become an indispensable part of almost every industry. For university researchers, they’ve increased the speed of analysis and discovery exponentially,” said UNLV President Donald Snyder. “Working together with Intel and Switch, UNLV has a tremendous opportunity not only to keep pace with but to play a leading role in big data research and economic development partnerships that require high-performance computing.”
Cherry Creek was developed by Intel with support from Bright Computing, CoolIT Systems, Micron Technology and Supermicro. The 48-node heterogenous system employs Intel Xeon CPUs and Xeon Phi coprocessors, fitted into two standard racks. Bright Cluster Manager provisions, monitors and manages the hybrid Xeon parts that together make up Cherry Creek’s 10,000 cores.
A Summary of Technical Details:
48 node cluster in two racks comprised of 12 Supermicro FatTwin Server Solutions with 48 2U half-width nodes.
Each node comprised of:
+Dual Intel Xeon E5-2697v2
+Three Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor 7120P
+Intel Solid-State Drives DC S3700 Series
+Intel True Scale Fabric Host Channel Adapter 7340
+128GB Micron DDR3 memory
Linpack Performance (Rmax): 131.5 TFLOPS
Theoretical Peak (Rpeak): 198.8 TFLOPS
Power: 74.00 kW
Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Compiler: Intel Composer XE 2013
Math Library: Intel MKL
MPI: Intel MPI