Cray T3E
Encyclopedia
Massively parallel
Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life sciences, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself,...
supercomputer architecture, launched in late November 1995. The first T3E was installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is a high performance computing and networking center. PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1986 by...
in 1996. Like the previous Cray T3D
Cray T3D
The T3D was Cray Research's first attempt at a massively parallel supercomputer architecture. Launched in 1993, it also marked Cray's first use of another company's microprocessor. The T3D consisted of between 32 and 2048 Processing Elements , each comprising a 150 MHz DEC Alpha 21064 ...
, it was a fully distributed memory machine using a 3D torus
Torus
In geometry, a torus is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three dimensional space about an axis coplanar with the circle...
topology interconnection network. The T3E initially used the DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
Alpha 21164
Alpha 21164
The Alpha 21164, also known by its code name, EV5, is a microprocessor developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corporation that implemented the Alpha instruction set architecture . It was introduced in January 1995, succeeding the Alpha 21064A as Digital's flagship microprocessor...
(EV5) microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
and was designed to scale from 8 to 2,176 Processing Elements (PEs). Each PE had between 64 MB and 2 GB of DRAM
Dram
Dram or DRAM may refer to:As a unit of measure:* Dram , an imperial unit of mass and volume* Armenian dram, a monetary unit* Dirham, a unit of currency in several Arab nationsOther uses:...
and a 6-way interconnect router with a payload bandwidth of 480 MB/s in each direction. Unlike many other MPP systems, including the T3D, the T3E was fully self-hosted and ran the UNICOS
Unicos
UNICOS is the name of a range of Unix-like operating system variants developed by Cray for its supercomputers. UNICOS is the successor of the Cray Operating System . It provides network clustering and source code compatibility layers for some other Unixes. UNICOS was originally introduced in 1985...
/mk distributed operating system
Distributed operating system
A distributed operating system is the logical aggregation of operating system software over a collection of independent, networked, communicating, and spatially disseminated computational nodes. Individual system nodes each hold a discrete software subset of the global aggregate operating system...
with a GigaRing I/O subsystem integrated into the torus for network, disk and tape I/O.
A 1480-processor T3E-1200 was the first supercomputer to achieve a performance of more than 1 teraflops running a computational science
Computational science
Computational science is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problems...
application, in 1998.
After Cray Research was acquired by Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
in February 1996, development of new Alpha-based systems was stopped. While providing the -900, -1200 and -1200E upgrades to the T3E, in the long term Silicon Graphics intended Cray T3E users to migrate to the Origin 3000, a MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
-based distributed shared memory
Distributed shared memory
Distributed Shared Memory , in Computer Architecture is a form of memory architecture where the memories can be addressed as one address space...
computer, introduced in 2000. However, the T3E continued in production after SGI sold the Cray business the same year.