The SX-6 is a

NEC SX is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network solut ...

supercomputer built by

NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

that debuted in 2001; the SX-6 was sold under license by

Cray Inc. Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

in the U.S. Each SX-6 single-

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, ...

system contains up to eight

vector processor In computing, a vector processor or array processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set where its instructions are designed to operate efficiently and effectively on large one-dimensional arrays of data called ...

s, which share up to 64 GB of

computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term ''primary storage ...

. The SX-6 processor is a single chip implementation containing a

unit and a

scalar processor Scalar processors are a class of computer processors that process only one data item at a time. Typical data items include integers and floating point numbers. Classification A scalar processor is classified as a single instruction, single data ...

fabricated in a 0.15 μm

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

process with

copper interconnects In semiconductor technology, copper interconnects are interconnects made of copper. They are used in silicon integrated circuits (ICs) to reduce propagation delays and power consumption. Since copper is a better conductor than aluminium, ICs usi ...

, whereas the SX-5 was a multi-chip implementation. The

Earth Simulator The is a series of supercomputers deployed at Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Yokohama Institute of Earth Sciences. Earth Simulator (first generation) The first generation of Earth Simulator, developed by the Japanese go ...

is based on the SX-6 architecture. The vector processor is made up of eight vector pipeline units each with seventy-two 256-word vector registers. The vector unit performs add/shift, multiply, divide and logical operations. The scalar unit is 64 bits wide and contains a 64 KB

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache County ...

. The scalar unit can decode, issue and complete four instructions per clock cycle.

Branch prediction In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow ...

and

speculative execution Speculative execution is an optimization technique where a computer system performs some task that may not be needed. Work is done before it is known whether it is actually needed, so as to prevent a delay that would have to be incurred by doing t ...

is supported. A multi-node system is configured by interconnecting up to 128 single-node systems via a high-speed, low-latency IXS (Internode

Crossbar Switch In electronics and telecommunications, a crossbar switch (cross-point switch, matrix switch) is a collection of switches arranged in a matrix configuration. A crossbar switch has multiple input and output lines that form a crossed pattern of int ...

). The peak performance of the SX-6 series vector processors is 8

GFLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...

. Thus a single-node system provides a peak performance of 64 GFLOPS, while a multi-node system provides up to 8 TFLOPS of peak

floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...

performance. The SX-6 uses

SUPER-UX SUPER-UX is a version of the Unix operating system from NEC that is used on its SX series of supercomputers. History The initial version of SUPER-UX was based on UNIX System V version 3.1 with features from BSD 4.3. The version for the NEC SX- ...

, a

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

developed by NEC. A SAN-based global file system (NEC's GFS) is available for a multinode installation. The default

batch processing Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...

system is NQSII, but

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

batch systems such as

Sun Grid Engine Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine (SGE), CODINE (Computing in Distributed Networked Environments) or GRD (Global Resource Director), was a grid computing computer cluster software system (otherwise known as a batch-queui ...

are also supported.

External links

SX-6 Specifications
Sx-6 Vector supercomputers {{super-compu-stub

See also

External links