NCAR has acquired a 64-processor Hewlett-Packard Exemplar SPP2000 to evaluate whether new Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) machines such as the HP Exemplar can deliver production computing cycles to the NCAR community, which includes a wide variety of users in the atmospheric and related sciences.
The SPP2000/64 is an Exemplar X-Class system that was procured through the High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) initiative. More information about the aquisition is available in a UCAR press release at:
www.ucar.edu/ucargen/press/exemplar.html.
SCD is using the HP SPP2000 to research the performance characteristics of cache-coherent DSM machines on algorithms used in atmosphere/ocean/ice simulations, when these algorithms are written specifically for the new architecture.
Such research is important because large existing scientific codes written for vector computers must eventually be made to execute on these new machines.
SCD will provide information about research results for users interested in using this type of machine for production model execution. This information will be available on the sioux home page at:
www.scd.ucar.edu/computers/sioux
To request an allocation on sioux, contact Ginger Caldwell (e-mail: cal@ucar.edu; phone: 303-497-1229).
