Next NASA Supercomputer Designed and Deployed by SGI

The upcoming supercomputing cluster to coordinate NASA's missions on the Moon and Mars will be delivered by system manufacturer SGI. The famous agency has chosen to purchase a 20,480-core SGI Altix ICE system that will be installed this summer in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

According to the space agency, the supercomputer will be able to deliver a total computing power of 245 Teraflop (245 trillion operations per second). The agency also claimed that the new computing cluster will be used in its future missions to the Moon and even Mars.

The new supercomputer will feature an impressive hardware configuration, built around the latest Intel Xeon quad-core processors, with a total RAM count of 20,800 GB. The computing cluster will be paired with SGI's InfiniteStorage InfiniBand disk solution, able to deliver about 450 TB of storage space. Moreover, the system will also be able to access a 115TB SGI InfiniteStorage NEXIS Network Attached Storage device for extra space.

"NASA's four mission directorates face computing challenges of unprecedented complexity, and these challenges present unique, even monumental computer requirements", said Dr. Rupak Biswas, acting chief of the NAS Division. "Just as it has helped NASA achieve breakthroughs that were previously impossible, this new supercomputer will enable NASA to continue tapping the far limits of science and innovation", he continued.

SGI's new system will work in conjunction with an older SGI supercomputer, deployed in 2004. Back then it was touted as the most powerful supercomputer in the world and accounted for multiple successful designs of launch vehicles. It was also used for weather forecasting and modeling.

"This new SGI Altix ICE system will help the agency carry humankind further into space, better understand the future that awaits our planet, and improve the quality of life for people around the world", said SGI CEO Robert Ewald. "We are delighted to extend our collaboration with NASA — a collaboration that began 25 years ago when NASA became SGI's first customer — as the agency embarks on its most exciting missions yet", he continued.

The supercomputer will be comprised of highly integrated blades enclosed in 40 racks. Each of the racks will feature 512 processor cores and 512GB of memory for an extremely powerful, yet modular structure. The new system will deliver more power at lower energy costs, and at the same time it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 293 metric tons every year. The SGI supercomputer will run Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.


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