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June 30, 2006
Sandia's ASCI Red is Decommissioned
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On a table in a small meeting room at Sandia National Laboratories rested a picture of the deceased - a row of identical cabinets that formed part of the entity known as ASCI Red, the world's first teraflop supercomputer.
Still one of the world's fastest supercomputers after all these years - nine - ASCI Red was being decommissioned.
"I've never buried a computer before," said Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Officer, to 30 people from Sandia and the Intel Corp. who gathered in mid-June to pay their respects. "We should go around the room so everyone can say their final farewells."
On a nearby table sat a simple white frosted cake. Encircled top and bottom by two strings of small simulated pearls and topped by pink flowers and a silver ribbon, it resembled a hat that could be worn by a very elderly lady, and indeed, ASCI Red was very old by supercomputer standards.
Sandia vice-president Rick Stulen eulogized, "ASCI Red broke all records and most importantly ushered the world into the teraflop regime. It still holds the record for the longest continuous rating as the world's fastest computer, four years running."
ASCI Red was a critical part of NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. The computer simulation capabilities developed by the ASC program, and conducted on supercomputers like ASCI Red, provide the nuclear weapons and materials analysis that NNSA needs to keep the nuclear weapons stockpile safe, secure and reliable without underground nuclear testing.
ASCI Red first broke the teraflops barrier in December, 1996 and topped the Linpack Top500 computer speed ratings seven consecutive times from June 1997 to June 2000.
Originally rated at 1.6 teraflops, a chip upgrade raised it to 3.1 t-flops just when it looked as though its world supremacy would be lost.
It remains, nine years after it was first turned on, still one of the fastest computers in the world.
Sandia director Bill Camp said that ASCI Red had the best reliability of any supercomputer ever built, and "was supercomputing's high-water mark in longevity, price, and performance."
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