NEWS!!
Tuesday November 10, 7:55 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun HPC 10000 Server Beats SGI, HP and IBM on LINPACK Benchmark
Sun Delivered 123.9 GFLOPs Utilizing a Four-Node Cluster for the Parallel LINPACK Benchmark/Two-Node Cluster Delivered 66.93 GFLOPs
PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - news) today announced a significant boost in performance results for the Sun HPC 10000 (Starfire(TM)) server as measured by the LINPACK Benchmark, the standard by which supercomputers are judged. The Sun HPC 10000 server running the Solaris(TM) operating environment, is currently the leading architecture on the TOP 500 list of most powerful supercomputing sites. In this recent test, the Sun HPC 10000 delivered 123.9 GFLOPs for the Parallel LINPACK Benchmark, beating comparable systems from SGI, HP, and IBM.
''Sun's results on the LINPACK Benchmark demonstrate the company's ability to consistently deliver on their processor road map, and provide scalable, high-performance solutions for the high-performance computing market,'' said Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and developer of the LINPACK Benchmarks. ''As Sun continues to make a serious drive toward capturing a significant portion of the high-performance computing market, they are proving that symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) architectures play an important role in the supercomputing arena.''
Sun demonstrated 123.9 GFLOPs for the Highly Parallel Computing version of the LINPACK Benchmark utilizing a four-node Sun HPC 10000 cluster networked with an OmniSwitch from Xylan Corporation [Nasdaq:XYLN - news]. The OmniSwitch network connected each of the HPC 10000's using OC-12 ATM at 622 Megabits per second. Each system in the cluster consisted of 64 (336 MHz) UltraSPARC(TM) II CPUs with 4MB external cache, 16 GB of memory and ATM-622 connectivity. The benchmark result, which was obtained with a matrix size of 80,640 (Nmax), represents a gain of approximately 23% over Sun's previous mark. Theoretical peak performance for the four-node cluster solution measured 172 GFLOPs.
Sun's two-node cluster, consisting of two Sun HPC 10000 servers configured with 64 (336 MHz) UltraSPARC II CPUs with 4MB external cache, 16 GB of memory and ATM-622 connectivity, delivered a LINPACK Benchmark result of 66.93 GFLOPs with a matrix size of 57,120 (Nmax), again, beating comparable systems from SGI, HP and IBM. Theoretical peak performance for the two-node cluster solution measured 86 GFLOPs.
The LINPACK Benchmark is a widely used set of tests emphasizing floating point addition and multiplication that measures the performance for solving linear equations used in scientific and engineering environments. There are multiple metrics for each LINPACK Benchmark, which define performance expectations and testing limitations. The TOP 500 list uses Parallel LINPACK Benchmark performance results to rank the most powerful computers in the world.
''Sun's commitment to providing high performance, scalable computer systems at price/performance levels unmatched by traditional supercomputers is positioning Sun as a leader in the HPC market,'' said Shahin Khan, director of marketing for Sun Data Center and High Performance Computing. ''As the HPC market continues shifting away from proprietary supercomputer architectures toward open-system architectures based on SMPs and clusters of SMPs, Sun's ability to consistently deliver on its HPC strategy will assure Sun remains in the forefront.''
Sun's systems strategy is to architect fat SMPs and clusters of fat SMPs. The SMP architecture, extending from workstations to high-end servers, is a widely used model for developing and running parallel applications. It is a proven, easy to deploy architecture that ensures that the thousands of applications developed and optimized for these systems will provide the optimum performance available without modification. This model also provides a large selection of binary-compatible, technical applications from key software vendors.
Traditionally the domain of engineers, physicists, astronomers, chemists and other scientists, HPC is also an invaluable tool in commercial computing. Customers in government, academic and research fields, petroleum, automotive, aerospace, electronics, financial and business sectors utilize Sun HPC solutions to solve complex, numerically intensive problems.
Sun HPC Servers
Sun HPC compute engines are based on a highly leveraged model, where SPARC (TM) technology is integrated into a family of SMP servers. The model is highly integral to Sun's strength and continued success in the commercial arena, especially with emerging commercial applications that are integrating with and making use of high-performance computing techniques.
Sun's complete HPC line includes six high-performance SMP systems, the HPC 450, 3500, 4500, 5500, 6500 and Starfire servers, all running the robust Solaris operating environment and are binary compatible with the entire SPARC processor installed base, providing tremendous investment protection and desktop-to-teraflop scalability. Sun's wide range of SMP systems, enables customers to choose products that fit present needs while providing the headroom to grow as needs change. The Sun HPC servers range in size from a four-processor Sun HPC 450 system to the 64-processor Sun HPC 10000 server.
Bundled with each Sun HPC server is the Sun HPC 2.0 software designed specifically for compute-intensive, technical computing environments. Sun HPC 2.0 software enables the development and execution of serial and parallelized high-performance applications. It provides middleware to facilitate and manage the workload of highly resource-intensive applications on Sun HPC servers, as well as clusters of these servers. Additionally, it provides the software development environment for creating and debugging applications that are parallelized for Sun HPC servers and clusters.
Xylan Switches
Xylan Corporation is one of the leading switching companies in the world; its products combine LAN switching, ATM switching, layer-three switching, and wide area switching, over a wide range of interfaces and media. Xylan's switches are distinguished by advanced architectures and chip designs, and by any-to-any switching. More information about Xylan and its products is available at www.xylan.com.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, ''The Network Is The Computer(TM),'' has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., to its position as a leading provider of high quality hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. With more than $10 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at sun.com.
NOTE: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Starfire, Solaris, HotJava and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web using a tool such as Netscape Navigator or Sun's HotJava(TM) browser. Type sun.com at the URL prompt.
Sun's HPC server and software solutions will be exhibited in the Sun booth #310 at SC '98 in Orlando, Florida.
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