14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s latest iteration of Windows for supercomputers powers a machine that has broken into the top 10 High Performance Computing systems worldwide. The Chinese-built Dawning 5000A, from the Shanghai Supercomputer Center, runs Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, and has managed to grab the number 10 spot on the 32nd edition of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers. Tested with the Linpack benchmark application, the Dawning 5000A delivered no less than 180.60 teraflops.
“The ego cluster is 1950 blades, each with 16 cores and 64 GB memory. 4xDDR IB and 1GB/s GigE networks. Every blade is based on a TYAN motherboard with 4 sockets and AMD Opteron 8347 HE (Barcelona b3) CPUs cadenced at 1.9 GHz (nope, not the fastest by any means). Dawning, AMD, and Mellanox,” revealed Tim Carroll, Microsoft product manager.
The Dawning 5000A is the fastest supercomputer worldwide, outside of the U.S. In fact, the top nine supercomputers are all based in the United States. At the same time, it is the largest High Performance Computing system, which runs a Windows operating system. Back in June 2008, delivering 68.5 teraflops, the system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) made it all the way to no. 23, among the world's TOP500 largest supercomputers.
However, Windows HPC Server 2008 doesn't even come close to Linux, despite the progress it has made. The open source Linux operating system has went all the way to 1.105 Petaflops on Roadrunner (BladeCenter QS22/LS21 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz / Opteron DC 1.8 GHz , Voltaire Infiniband), the HPC machine that is no. 1 in the TOP500.
“A year ago we did a Top500 run on our internal Rainier cluster, and reached 11.75Tflops. One short year ago. Today, the Dawning cluster reached 180.6Tflops. More than 15x higher. And the judges at Top500 have LINPACK to make sure everyone takes their home run swings on the same playing field,” Carroll added.