AUG 13, 1999, M2 Communications - SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- 3Com
Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS) today announced that Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, is using 3Com Gigabit Ethernet switches in
its Avalon supercomputer. This device, which is among the most powerful
computers in the world, was built in-house using off-the-shelf
components from 3Com and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), now
Compaq. As a result, Avalon cost only about $275,000. In addition, the
laboratory's Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS) has upgraded its local
area network (LAN) using 3Com Gigabit Ethernet systems. Los Alamos is a
scientific institution owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. It will
use Avalon for research ranging from astrophysics and global climate
modeling to materials and weapons technologies. CNLS, one of the
research centers operating within the laboratory, is devoted to the
identification and study of fundamental nonlinear phenomena and promote
their use in applied research. The center coordinates the efforts of
the Laboratory's premier researchers from many disciplines and many
divisions, mobilizing theoreticians and experimentalists in applied
math, statistical physics, solid state and materials physics, polymer
chemistry, structural biology and biochemistry.
"Avalon sets a new standard for cost-effective supercomputing," said
Michael Warren of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical
Astrophysics Group and Avalon's chief architect. "We're able to process
huge amounts of data reliably and without latency, even at
supercomputer speeds."
Connectivity lies at the core of Avalon's supercomputer design, known
as Beowulf architecture. This approach deploys multiple processors, or
nodes, that are networked together. Computations are distributed among
the nodes via the network, enabling all the processors to work
simultaneously on tasks for much quicker results.
Supercomputing with Gigabit Ethernet Performance Avalon is powered by
a 3Com network based on a Gigabit Ethernet backbone. The
supercomputer's nodes are comprised of 144 DEC desktop computers with
533 megahertz, 64-bit processors and 256 megabytes of RAM. In total,
Avalon has nearly 40 gigabytes of RAM. The nodes are all linked at
full-duplex 100 megabits-per-second (Mbps) Fast Ethernet speeds to four
3Com 36-port SuperStack II 3900 Gigabit Ethernet switches with three
1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet uplink modules. Using their Gigabit Ethernet
uplinks, these switches connect to a 12-port SuperStack II 9300 Gigabit
Ethernet switch, which serves as the network backbone. This robust
design features 12 gigabits of connectivity between the SuperStack II
9300 switch and the SuperStack II 3900 switches.
"One of Avalon's key enabling technologies is the ability of the
SuperStack II 3900 switch to trunk its three discrete Gigabit Ethernet
uplinks into one," said David Neal, systems administrator for Los
Alamos' CNLS and a co-developer of Avalon. "This allows each switch to
deliver, in effect, a three gigabit link to the SuperStack II 9300
switch, ensuring the network can sustain extremely high traffic volumes
between the 144 nodes."
To reduce costs, Avalon's development team deployed the open source
Red Hat Linux 5.1 operating system and other software that are freely
available on the Internet.
When Avalon was first built last spring, it featured 70 nodes, but
the scalability and high-density of the SuperStack II switches
permitted Avalon to attain even greater speeds. "Just half the ports on
the SuperStack II 3900 switches had processors linked to them, which
meant the network was operating at only half its capacity," added
Warren. "The wire-speed performance of the 3900s and the full-duplex 12
gigabit backplane of the 9300 let us expand Avalon to 144 processors,
which multiplies its computing power." With 70 nodes, Avalon reached
speeds of 19.2 gigaflops, which is 19.2 billion floating point
operations per second. At that speed, Avalon was the 315th most
powerful computer in the world. With 144 nodes, the supercomputer's
performance is expected to approach 60 gigaflops, which will place it
within the top one hundred most powerful computing devices. "Avalon
began with much more processing power per dollar than any other
supercomputer and we improved upon that considerably," said Neal.
Like many supercomputers, Avalon will be used for exotic scientific
research, including exploration into the origins of the universe.
Avalon, however, demonstrates that Beowulf class supercomputing is
accessible to many organizations. "In campus environments, workstations
can be linked together and used at night for supercomputing tasks,"
said Neal. "A high-speed network is essential so the workstations don't
compete for bandwidth, undermining performance."
"When we first set up Avalon, we received all the components on a
Friday and connected them over the weekend," said Warren. "On Monday,
we had one of the most powerful computers on the planet. Supercomputing
is no longer super-costly."
Enhancing the Network to Handle Supercomputing
To complement Avalon's enhanced computing performance, CNLS recently
upgraded its LAN. Prior to deploying the SuperStack II Switch 9300
switch-based Gigabit Ethernet backbone, CNLS ran its research
applications in switched Ethernet/FDDI environment based on a 3Com
CoreBuilder 6000 Ethernet/FDDI switch. With the introduction of Avalon
and the increasing size and complexity of the programs it ran, this
infrastructure created a bottleneck in research operations that
routinely include gigabyte file transfers. Dismissing ATM as too costly
and FDDI and Fast Ethernet as too slow, CNLS chose Gigabit Ethernet as
its backbone technology. With the reliability of 3Com systems already
proven in its earlier network, CNLS again turned to 3Com for its
upgrade.
Today, the CNLS network consists of a Gigabit Ethernet backbone
comprised of a single SuperStack II Switch 9300 switch with 1000 Mbps
links to five 36-port SuperStack II Switch 3900 switches and to a
single CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 high function switch. The CoreBuilder
3500 switch provides layer 3 switching, while the SuperStack II 3900
switches provide full-duplex 100 Mbps Ethernet connections to networked
desktops.
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