10 petaflop supercomputer in the making, will take US back to 1 on top500

Re:10 petaflop supercomputer in the making, will take US bac... by jacques_chester on Thursday November 18, 2010 @12:32AM (#1917008)

  The key component is the hub/switch chip.
  The four POWER7 chips in a compute node are
  connected to a hub/switch chip, which serves
  as an interconnect gateway as well as a
  switch that routes traffic between other hub
  chips. The system therefore requires no
  external network switches or routers,
  providing considerable savings in switching
  components, cabling, and power.

Sounds a bit like the design SiCortex had for their machines (before cashflow interruption killed them).

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Re:10 petaflop supercomputer in the making, will take US bac... by sparky on Thursday November 18, 2010 @02:44AM (#1917188)

Most supercomputers with multi-socket nodes have had something like this for similar reasons. The earliest reference I can find is here http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefi... , but more modern examples of the idea are the Cray SeaStar http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.150... or even SeaMicro's I/O virtualization ASIC if you squint the right way http://www.seamicro.com/?q=node/38 .

SiCortex had some neat ideas, it was a shame to see them go.

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Re:10 petaflop supercomputer in the making, will take US bac... by jacques_chester on Thursday November 18, 2010 @07:05AM (#1917520)

Thanks, I learned some new things.

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