From:	 "Maloof, Staci A" <Staci.Maloof@pnl.gov>
To:	 
Subject: HP chosen for $24.5M Linux-based supercomputer for
 chemistry research at PNNL
Date:	 Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:05:04 -0700

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
	
PNNL to receive Hewlett-Packard supercomputer

HP’s next-generation IA64-based, supercomputer expected to become one of
fastest systems in the world

RICHLAND, Wash. - The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory today announced that it has ordered an 8.3TF Linux-based
supercomputer from Hewlett Packard Company to be installed in the Molecular
Science Computing Facility in the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular
Sciences Laboratory, a DOE scientific user facility at PNNL.

The system will have 1,400 next-generation Intel* Itanium* Family Processors
that are code-named McKinley and Madison. Each of the 700 nodes will have an
independent connection to the 53TB Storage Area Network and will include a
QSNet2/Elan4 interconnect from Quadrics.  When operational in early 2003,
this computer is expected to be the top-ranked Linux system in the world.

Beginning May 1, a prototype of the new 8.3TF Linux-based supercomputer from
Hewlett Packard will be delivered to PNNL.  The installation will consist of
32 Longs Peak nodes with prototype McKinley processors.  This prototype
system will have 64 processors corresponding to roughly 256GF of
computational power and 256GB of total memory.  Half of the nodes will each
have 200MB/sec sustained I/O rate to 256GB of local storage.  The HP Longs
Peak nodes include the HP zx1 chipset, which provides four independent PCI-X
busses, one at 1GB/sec. The HP zx1 scalable memory expander provides
12.8GB/s bandwidth to main memory.  The system also will include the
Quadrics QSNet1/Elan3 interconnect, the lowest latency interconnect
available at this time.  

Software developers in EMSL will use the prototype system to tune NWChem, a
PNNL-developed award-winning computational chemistry code designed from
scratch to be scaleable and have high performance on massively parallel
computers, and other EMSL user codes.

Phase I of the production system will be installed beginning Aug. 31, 2002,
and will contain 128 Longs Peak nodes with 256 production-McKinley
processors, corresponding to 1TF of computational power, and 572GB of
memory.  The Phase I system will be based off of 1.0-GHz McKinley
processors, just like the prototype system.  Each processor has 3MB of
on-chip L2 cache and is expected to be capable of sustaining 86 percent of
peak on a matrix multiply (DGEMM).  The Phase-I system will have similar
features to the prototype in terms of interconnect and memory bandwidth.
This system will have a 27TB Storage Area Network (SAN) and independent
host-bus adaptors for each of the 128 nodes.

The final production system will be delivered Feb. 28, 2003. At that time,
HP will deliver an additional 566 nodes with Intel Madison processors.  The
final Phase2 system will have a total of 1400 IA-64 processors with 1.8TB of
memory and 53TB of SAN-based global storage with an additional 117TB of
usable local storage divided among the nodes.  The final system will include
the QSNet2/Elan4 interconnect from Quadrics operating on an independent
1GB/sec PCIX2 bus.  The system will be fully integrated with the Phase-I
system and available to external users by early summer 2003.

The system being delivered by HP has unique features that significantly
distinguish it from other Linux computer systems based on commodity chips.
It is the additional chip set coupled to the Intel processors that enables
the HP solution to deliver such a high percentage of peak performance.

"Because HP co-developed the Itanium™ architecture with Intel, our engineers
have intimate knowledge of the processor," said Barry Crume, business
product manager for Itanium workstations, HP Technical Computing Division.
"Using our expertise with multiple operating systems and technical and
business applications, we then whittled away the unessential to deliver a
chipset that is as lean and powerful as a finely tuned race car."

Hewlett-Packard systems represents nearly one-third of the TOP500
supercomputers worldwide as ranked on the TOP500
list(http://www.top500.org).  

“Today’s announcement shows how HP has worked to help accelerate the shift
from proprietary platforms to open architectures, which provide increased
scalability, speed and functionality at a lower cost,” said Rich DeMillo,
vice president and chief technology officer at HP. “This supercomputer is
another validation of HP’s service-centric technology vision, exemplifies
the power and benefits inherent in the Itanium architecture and Linux, and
clearly illustrates that there is more than one top player in the
supercomputing market.”  

“This system will allow our users to solve ever more complex problems with
higher reliability and accuracy, including problems such as cleanup of DOE
sites like Hanford and new computational research areas like systems
biology,” according to Scott Studham, technical group leader of computer
operations for the MSCF.  “We are excited by the opportunity to provide more
than 30 times the performance of what we currently have to our user base.”  

EMSL (<http://www.emsl.pnl.gov>) is a national user facility sponsored by
the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in DOE’s Office of
Science.  The Molecular Science Computing Facility
(<http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/capabs/mscf/index.html>) includes a molecular
science software suite, graphics and visualization laboratory, and
high-performance computing center available to outside scientists through a
competitive proposal process.

Hewlett-Packard Company - a leading global provider of computing and imaging
solutions and services - is focused on making technology and its benefits
accessible to all.  HP had a total revenue of $45.2 billion in its 2001
fiscal year.  Information about HP and its products can be found on the
World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a DOE research facility and
delivers breakthrough science and technology in the areas of environment,
energy, health, fundamental sciences and national security.  Battelle, based
in Columbus, Ohio, has operated the laboratory for DOE since 1965. Business
inquiries on PNNL research and technologies should be directed to
1-888-375-PNNL or e-mail: inquiry@pnl.gov <mailto:inquiry@pnl.gov>.

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