SDSC announced late last week that they have been awarded $2.8M to deploy a new 10,368-core super from Appro. SDSC has focused in recent years on systems that enable data intensive computing, with a particular emphasis on flash memory systems. In November last year SDSC announced that Appro would be providing its next $20M super (named Gordon) as a follow on to SDSC’s (apparently successful) Dash flash memory prototype.
“Trestles is appropriately named because it will serve as a bridge between SDSC’s unique, data-intensive resources available to TeraGrid users now and into the future,” said Mike Norman, SDSC’s interim director. “The overarching goal of Trestles is to enable as much productive science as possible in this data-intensive era.”
The new system, named Trestles, is a quad-socket, 8-core AMD Magny-Cours system connected via a QDR InfiniBand fabric. Each of the 324 nodes has 64 GB of DDR3 memory and 120 GB of flash memory. The system is expected to enter operations later this year and remain in service for three years.
In addition, SDSC is taking an innovative approach of complementing the existing capability of TeraGrid systems that favor large users and high system utilization, with a system that has the capacity to deliver science impact for large numbers of TeraGrid users.
“TeraGrid user data show that scientific impact occurs across all allocation levels and that many well-known computational science usage models do not require large-scale jobs or huge allocations,” said Richard Moore, deputy director of SDSC and a co-PI on the project.However, a fair number of computational science approaches require resources with scheduling flexibility and rapid turnaround. “By focusing on core counts of 1,024 or less, Trestles is designed to serve a much larger number of users while simultaneously improving their productivity as measured by turnaround and the number of jobs completed,” said Allan Snavely, associate director of SDSC and also a co-PI for the new system.
More in the story, including a bit about the Science Gateway program.
