Most supercomputers focus on pure crunching power with powerful processors, lately even graphics circuits, to complete calculations in the fastest possible way. Now that San Diego Supercomputer Center (SCSC) has started building a new supercomputer for the National Science Foundation (NSF) storage is in the focal point, which has resulted in the first supercomputer with SSDs for improving performance and lowering power consumption.
SCSC turned to Intel that will not only contribute the processors but also the Solid State technology for the computer.
When fully configured and deployed, Gordon will feature 245 teraflops of total compute power, 64 terabytes (TB) of DRAM (digital random access memory), 256 TB of flash memory, and four petabytes of disk storage.
The supercomputer will consist of nodes where each base platform will boost 240 gigaflops and 64GB RAM. Thirty two of these base nodes are packed together into “supernodes” that will improve performance to 7.7 teraflops. The complete system will use 32 supernodes for reaching the maximal performance of 245 teraflops, which would make it one of the 30 fastest supercomputers on the planet.
With an internal high-speed 16Gbps network Gordon’s 32 supernodes will be used for earthquake simulations with three-dimensional seismic pictures requiring high storage speeds.
