NEWS BRIEFS
Colorado Springs, COLO. -≠ SRC Computers, the company founded by legendary computer architect Seymour R. Cray, will discuss an innovative approach to high performance computing at this yearπs SC2000 show in Dallas, Texas, November 4-10. The company will preview Serial Number 1 of its forthcoming SRC-6 computer, showcasing the architecture that company officials say represents both Seymour Crayπs final design and “the next big thing” in high performance computing (HPC).
Conference attendees can hear presentations on the new machine at the SRC Computers booth, #278, and can sign up for a more in-depth non-disclosure briefing by visiting http://www.srccomp.com/supercomputing2000.htm or stopping by the booth.
The SRC-6 computer, which the company will introduce in 2001, combines up to 512 Intel≥ based microprocessors with reconfigurable, field programmable gate array (FPGA) technologies to deliver unparalleled computing power at an affordable cost.
“The SRC-6 is the first machine to combine the irrefutable Intel price/performance curve with the explosion occurring in FPGA technology in a general-purpose HPC architecture,” said Michael Henesey, vice president of marketing and sales at SRC Computers. “The implications for both peak and sustained performance measurements are staggering. By delivering up to 512 Intel processors on a common memory switch, and then adding over 5 billion gates of configurable logic, the SRC-6 shatters convention and promises substantial performance gains for both technical and commercial applications including Internet infrastructure.”
Targeted applications for the new machine include performance-intensive codes in areas such as bioinformatics, signal and image processing, business intelligence and data mining, scientific and technical computing, and some Internet infrastructure applications.
“The Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative must acquire the most powerful supercomputers in the world in order to meet our goals for the nationπs nuclear stockpile stewardship,” said Dr. Jose L. Munoz, Lead Computer Scientist for the Department of Energyπs ASCI Program. “As a result, the supercomputers that ASCI demands are targeted for over 100 TeraFLOPS of capability to satisfy our simulation requirements. To meet these goals, revolutionary approaches to computer architecture will be required. This involves, at the very minimum, utilization of the novel processing technologies such as those employed by SRC Computers, development of high-speed inter-processor communication fabrics and innovative approaches to memory bandwidth limitations. This must all be supported by the appropriate software infrastructure (compilers, libraries, operating systems, debuggers, etc.) that will enable and support maximum utilization of these components.”
“High end computing is essential to science and engineering research,” said Dr. Robert R. Borchers, director of the National Science Foundations ACIR Division. “If United States is to continue as the world leader in basic research, our scientists and engineers must have access to the most powerful computers, and companies such as SRC must continue to push the performance envelope by exploring innovative architectures.”
SRC Computers makes innovative use of commodity microprocessors and reconfigurable computing technologies to provide fast, powerful, cost-effective computing systems for the engineering and scientific markets and segments of the Internet economy. SRC was established by Seymour R. Cray, a visionary giant in the field of supercomputing, and the companyπs forthcoming SRC-6 computer will embody the architecture conceptualized by Cray before his death in an automobile accident in 1996. For more information about SRC Computers and reconfigurable computing, please visit http://www.srccomp.com .
The premier conference on high performance computing and networking, SC2000 is sponsored by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture (SIGARCH). For more information, visit http://www.sc2000.org .
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