HPCwire: Sun Unveils Enhancements To Constellation System

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June 23, 2009

Sun Unveils Enhancements To Constellation System

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HAMBURG, Germany, June 23 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced new products that enhance the Sun Constellation System, including a new InfiniBand (IB) Quad Data Rate (QDR) switch for optimal cluster interconnect performance, new Sun HPC Software Linux Edition 2.0 for faster and simpler cluster deployment, and Sun Grid Engine 6.2 Update 3 for ease of management. Sun is also demonstrating its storage leadership for HPC, with new enhancements to the Lustre file system, which manages data on nearly two-thirds of the Top 50 supercomputers and seven of the Top 10 supercomputers on the just-released Top500 list. For more information on Sun's HPC solutions, please visit: http://www.sun.com/hpc.

New Open Networking, Software and Sun Storage Bolster Power of Sun Constellation System

Sun is announcing new products today that demonstrate continued innovation and expansion of the Sun Constellation System. Designed using Sun's Open Network Systems architecture, the Sun Constellation System is one of the most integrated and balanced HPC system available today. Highlights include:

Sun Datacenter InfiniBand QDR Switch 648: Delivers extreme density, performance and reduced deployment complexity with up to three times more ports per rack, four and a half times more system bandwidth, and up to 3:1 cable reduction than competitive Double Data Rate (DDR) switch solutions.
Sun HPC Software, Linux Edition 2.0: Makes it faster and easier to install Linux-based environments by providing an integrated Linux software stack for HPC solutions, and gives customers a choice of running SUSE 10, CentOS and Red Hat Linux.
Lustre 1.8.0: Introduces several robust new features to improve system performance and functionality, including the adaptive timeouts feature, client interoperability feature, OSS read cache feature and Version-based Recovery (VBR).

Sun Constellation System Powers Two of the Top 10 Systems on Top500 List

The Sun Constellation System is expected to power some of the largest HPC systems in the world, with more than two PetaFLOPS of performance already installed or ordered. According to the latest Top500 list released today, Sun increased its overall presence on the list, including two supercomputers in the Top 10 powered by the Sun Constellation System: the Ranger supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at #8, and the JuRoPa supercomputer at Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany at #10 -- which is also the most efficient system among the Top 10 supercomputers as measured by the LINPACK benchmark. In addition, nine of the top 10 supercomputers are using Sun Storage technologies, including Lustre and tape storage.

Sun is also announcing new HPC customers today, including:

Toshiba Research Europe recently replaced five racks of obsolete white-box systems with two Sun Blade 6000 chassis filled with Sun Blade X6450 server modules, powered by Intel Xeon six-core processors. The company is also deploying Sun HPC Software with Linux and Sun Grid Engine software. Toshiba Research Europe is using the new Sun solution for advanced fundamental research in the field of wireless telecommunications.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) turned to an HPC solution from Sun to speed its biomedical research and image analysis. The UNC-CH grid -- called the Biomedical Analysis and Simulation Supercomputer (BASS) system -- consists of 17 Sun Fire X4600 M2 servers, each with 16 2.8GHz Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor cores. UNC-CH is also deploying a Sun Storage 6140 array, Sun Storage SL500 modular library system, 45 Sun Ultra 40 M2 workstations and Sun Grid Engine software.

Sun at ISC 2009

Sun is previewing a range of HPC technologies at the ISC 2009 show (Sun booth #410), such as "Project M2," a future addition to its Sun Datacenter Switch family that will be up to six times more space-efficient than competitive chassis switch solutions while delivering up to twice the systems bandwidth than competitive DDR chassis switch solutions. Sun is also demonstrating a next-generation, high-end Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System, in addition to the upcoming Sun Blade X6240 and Sun Blade X6440 server modules powered by the new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor code-named "Istanbul." The four-socket Sun Blade X6440 server module will deliver up to twice the I/O capacity (142 Gbps) of competing blade and rackmount servers, and up to 12 TeraFLOPS of peak performance when a full set of blades are installed in the Sun Blade 6048 chassis.

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