ASCI White
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

ASCI White was a supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, which was briefly the fastest supercomputer in the world. It was a computer cluster based on IBM's commercial RS/6000 SP computer. 512 nodes were interconnected for ASCI White, with each node containing sixteen 375MHz IBM POWER3-II
processor Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) **Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...
s. In total, the ASCI White had 8,192 processors, 6
terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
s (TB) of memory, and 160TB of disk storage. It was almost exclusively used for large-scale computations requiring dozens, hundreds, or thousands of processors. The computer weighed 106tons and consumed 3MW of electricity with a further 3MW needed for cooling. It had a theoretical processing speed of 12.3 teraFLOPS (TFLOPS). A single modern 4U rackmount server could match these specifications while weighing under 50 kg and consuming under 2 kW of power. The system ran IBM's
AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgi ...
operating system. ASCI White was made up of three individual systems, the 512-node White, the 28-node Ice and the 68-node Frost. The system was built in
Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...
. Completed in June 2000 it was transported to specially built facilities in California and officially dedicated on August 15, 2001. Its peak performance of 12.3TFLOPS was not achieved in the widely accepted LINPACK tests. The system cost US$110 million (equivalent to $ million in ). It was built as stage three of the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) started by the U.S.
Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...
and the
National Nuclear Security Administration The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of Nuclear physics, nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the Stockpil ...
to build a simulator to replace live WMD testing following the moratorium on testing started by
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
George H. W. Bush in 1992 and extended by
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
in 1993. The machine was decommissioned beginning July 27, 2006.


References

Cluster computing Nuclear stockpile stewardship Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory IBM supercomputers 64-bit computers {{Super-compu-stub