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IBM SP — Seaborg
About Seaborg
The NERSC IBM SP RS/6000, named Seaborg, is a distributed memory computer with 6,080 processors available to run scientific computing applications. Each processor has a peak performance of 1.5 GFlops.
The processors are distributed among 380 compute nodes with 16 processors per node. Processors on each node have a shared memory pool of between 16 and 64 GBytes (4 have 64 GBytes; 64 have 32 GBytes; 312 have 16 GBytes). An SP node is an example of a Shared Memory Processor or SMP.
The compute nodes are connected to each other with a high-bandwidth, low-latency switching network. Each node runs its own full instance of the standard AIX operating system. The disk storage system is a distributed, parallel I/O system called GPFS. Additional nodes serve exclusively as GPFS servers.
Seaborg's network switch is the IBM "Colony" which is connected to two "GX Bus Colony" network adapters per node. For more technical information about the switch, see the IBM Redbook Understanding and Using the IBM SP Switch.
Seaborg specifications
| NERSC's Seaborg System | |
|---|---|
| Total nodes | 416 |
| Compute | 380 |
| GPFS | 20 |
| Login | 6 |
| Network | 2 |
| Spare | 8 |
| Total Disk | 44 Terabytes |
| NERSC Seaborg Nodes | |
| IBM designation | Nighthawk |
| Number of CPUs per node | 16 |
| Physical memory | 16-64 GB (4 have 64 GB; 64 have 32 GB; 312 have 16 GB) |
| Number of network adapter cards for inter-node communication | 2 (csss denotes the union of both cards) |
| POWER 3 Processor | |
| Clock speed | 375MHz |
| FP Results/Clock | 4 |
| Peak Performance | 1.5 Gflops |
| L1 Instruction Cache | 32 KB |
| L1 Data Cache Line Size | 128 bytes |
| L1 Data Cache | 64 KB |
| L2 Cache | 8192 KB |
More technical information about SP POWER3 processors is available in the IBM Redbook POWER3 Introduction and Tuning Guide.
Seaborg Configuration
- 416 16-processor nodes (with 64G, 32G, or 16G memory)
- 375 MHz POWER 3+ processors
- 1.5 GFlops/sec peak processor speed
- 380 compute nodes (6,080 processors)
- 6 login nodes
- 20 nodes supporting the General Parallel Filesystem (GPFS)
- 2 network node
- 8 service nodes
- 44 TB of disk space in GPFS
One Seaborg Node
