SX architecture
Encyclopedia
The SX series are vector
supercomputers
designed, manufactured, and marketed by NEC
. There have been seven generations of SX systems since the first models, the SX-1 and SX-2, were announced in April 1983. Since the late 1990s, the SX series has been amongst the most advanced of vector supercomputers. The Earth Simulator
, which is built from SX-6 nodes, was the fastest supercomputer from 2002 to 2004 on the LINPACK
benchmark, achieving 35.86 TFLOPS. For his work on the SX series, Tadashi Watanabe
received the Eckert–Mauchly Award in 1998 and the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
in 2006. Starting in 2001, Cray
marketed the SX-5 and SX-6 exclusively in the US and non-exclusively elsewhere for a short time.
s (CPUs) are arranged into a parallel
vector processing
node. These nodes are then installed in a regular SMP
arrangement.
and can address up to 1 TB
of memory. Up to 16 CPUs may be used in a single node, and a complete system may have up to 512 nodes.
operating system
(OS), and come with FORTRAN
and C++
compiler
s. Cray has also developed an Ada compiler which is available as an option. Some vertical application
s are available through NEC, but in general customers are expected to develop much of their own software.
The Earth Simulator
uses a custom OS called "ESOS" (Earth Simulator Operating System). It has many features custom designed for the Earth Simulator which are not in the regular SUPER-UX OS.
In addition to commercial applications, there is a wide body of free software
for the UNIX environment which can be compiled and run on SUPER-UX, such as Emacs
, and Vim
. A port of GCC
is also available for the platform.
Vector processor
A vector processor, or array processor, is a central processing unit that implements an instruction set containing instructions that operate on one-dimensional arrays of data called vectors. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, whose instructions operate on single data items...
supercomputers
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
designed, manufactured, and marketed by NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
. There have been seven generations of SX systems since the first models, the SX-1 and SX-2, were announced in April 1983. Since the late 1990s, the SX series has been amongst the most advanced of vector supercomputers. The Earth Simulator
Earth Simulator
The Earth Simulator , developed by the Japanese government's initiative "Earth Simulator Project", was a highly parallel vector supercomputer system for running global climate models to evaluate the effects of global warming and problems in solid earth geophysics...
, which is built from SX-6 nodes, was the fastest supercomputer from 2002 to 2004 on the LINPACK
LINPACK
LINPACK is a software library for performing numerical linear algebra on digital computers. It was written in Fortran by Jack Dongarra, Jim Bunch, Cleve Moler, and Gilbert Stewart, and was intended for use on supercomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s...
benchmark, achieving 35.86 TFLOPS. For his work on the SX series, Tadashi Watanabe
Tadashi Watanabe
is a Japanese computer engineer. Watanabe is the project manager of the RIKEN Next-Generation Supercomputer R&D Center. He played a central role in the development of the NEC SX architecture. Watanabe was awarded the Eckert–Mauchly Award in 1998, and the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering...
received the Eckert–Mauchly Award in 1998 and the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
The Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, also known as the Seymour Cray Award, is an award given by the IEEE Computer Society, to recognize significant and innovative contributions in the field of high-performance computing. The award honors scientists who exhibit the creativity demonstrated by...
in 2006. Starting in 2001, Cray
Cray
Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...
marketed the SX-5 and SX-6 exclusively in the US and non-exclusively elsewhere for a short time.
SX Series systems
Since the SX-4, SX series supercomputers are constructed in a doubly parallel manner. A number of central processing unitCentral processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
s (CPUs) are arranged into a parallel
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
vector processing
Vector processor
A vector processor, or array processor, is a central processing unit that implements an instruction set containing instructions that operate on one-dimensional arrays of data called vectors. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, whose instructions operate on single data items...
node. These nodes are then installed in a regular SMP
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
arrangement.
| SX-2 | SX-3 | SX-4 | SX-5 | SX-6 NEC SX-6 The SX-6 is a supercomputer built by NEC Corporation that debuted in 2001; the SX-6 was sold under license by Cray Inc. in the U.S. Each SX-6 single-node system contains up to eight vector processors, which share up to 64 GB of computer memory... |
SX-7 | SX-8 SX-8 The SX-8 is a supercomputer built by NEC Corporation. The SX-8 Series implements an eight-way SMP system in a compact node module and uses an enhanced version of the single chip vector processor that was introduced with the SX-6. The NEC SX-8 processors run at 2 GHz for vectors and... |
SX-8R | SX-9 | |
| Max. CPUs | 1 | 4 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 32 | 8 | 8 | 16 |
| Peak CPU GFLOPS | 1.3 | 5.5 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 8.83 | 16 | 35.2 | 102.4 |
| Peak system GFLOPS | 1.3 | 22 | 64 | 128 | 64 | 282 | 128 | 281.6 | 1638 |
| Max. main memory | 256 MB Megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000... |
2 GB Gigabyte The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is... |
16 GB | 128 GB | 64 GB | 256 GB | 128 GB | 256 GB | 1 TB Terabyte The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes... |
| System memory B/W (GB/s) | 11 | 44 | 512 | 1,024 | 256 | 1,129 | 512 | 563.2 | 4,096 |
| Memory B/W per CPU (GB/s) | 11 | 22 | 16 | 64 | 32 | 35.3 | 64 | 70.4 | 256 |
| SX-4 | SX-4A | SX-5 | SX-6 NEC SX-6 The SX-6 is a supercomputer built by NEC Corporation that debuted in 2001; the SX-6 was sold under license by Cray Inc. in the U.S. Each SX-6 single-node system contains up to eight vector processors, which share up to 64 GB of computer memory... |
SX-8 SX-8 The SX-8 is a supercomputer built by NEC Corporation. The SX-8 Series implements an eight-way SMP system in a compact node module and uses an enhanced version of the single chip vector processor that was introduced with the SX-6. The NEC SX-8 processors run at 2 GHz for vectors and... |
SX-8R | SX-9 | |
| Max. nodes | 16 | 16 | 32 | 128 | 512 | 512 | 512 |
| Max. CPUs | 512 | 256 | 512 | 1,024 | 4,096 | 4,096 | 8,192 |
| Peak TFLOPS | 1 | 0.5 | 4 | 8 | 65 | 140.8 | 839 |
| Max. main memory | 256 GB | 512 GB | 4 TB | 8 TB | 64 TB | 128 TB | 512 TB |
| Total memory B/W (TB/s) | 8 | 4 | 32 | 32 | 131 | 281.6 | 2,048 |
Current system
The SX-9 is the current model. Each SX-9 CPU has a peak performance of 102.4 GFLOPSFLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
and can address up to 1 TB
Terabyte
The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...
of memory. Up to 16 CPUs may be used in a single node, and a complete system may have up to 512 nodes.
Software environment
Most SX supercomputers run the SUPER-UXSUPER-UX
SUPER-UX, sometimes also annotated SuperUx or Super-UX, is the version of the Unix operating system that is used on NEC SX architecture supercomputers...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
(OS), and come with FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
and C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s. Cray has also developed an Ada compiler which is available as an option. Some vertical application
Vertical application
A vertical application or vertical market application, is software defined by requirements for a single, or narrowly defined, market. It contrasts with horizontal application....
s are available through NEC, but in general customers are expected to develop much of their own software.
The Earth Simulator
Earth Simulator
The Earth Simulator , developed by the Japanese government's initiative "Earth Simulator Project", was a highly parallel vector supercomputer system for running global climate models to evaluate the effects of global warming and problems in solid earth geophysics...
uses a custom OS called "ESOS" (Earth Simulator Operating System). It has many features custom designed for the Earth Simulator which are not in the regular SUPER-UX OS.
In addition to commercial applications, there is a wide body of free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
for the UNIX environment which can be compiled and run on SUPER-UX, such as Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
, and Vim
Vim (text editor)
Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface...
. A port of GCC
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
is also available for the platform.