DEFENSE

STENNIS SPACE CENTER, MS -- The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) has purchased a powerful IBM eServer p690-based supercomputer, named Blue Ocean, that will perform basic research in the development of a practical vaccine for malaria and other infectious diseases. The most powerful machine in the Department of Defense (DoD) computing arsenal, the supercomputer will also help scientists assemble the world's most detailed model of ocean waves, currents and temperatures, as well as tackle other key DoD research and development initiatives. Blue Ocean -- installed and supported by Northrop Grumman Information Technology -- will process over six trillion calculations per second, making it one of the largest supercomputers in the world. "This is a huge boost in computational capability for the Navy and the Department of Defense," said Ed Johnson, NAVOCEANO Technical Director. "High performance computing systems form the computational backbone providing unparalleled capabilities for the daily ocean- and global-scale modeling we perform to support worldwide DoD operations." Located at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, the supercomputer is part of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The program provides DoD researchers with high performance computing capability comparable to those available in the private sector and the foremost academic research centers. "The Department of Defense has a large and growing need for terascale systems such as the IBM eServer p690 being installed at the NAVO MSRC," said Cray Henry, Director of the DoD HPC Modernization Program. "These systems support our most demanding HPC requirements across a variety of computational technology areas. This system will provide DoD scientists and engineers the cutting edge computational capability they need." POWER4 Microprocessors The NAVOCEANO system clusters together 37 IBM eServer p690 servers, with a combined 1,184 IBM POWER4(TM) microprocessors, 1.5 terabytes of memory and approximately 20 terabytes of data storage capacity provided by the IBM TotalStorage 7133 Serial Disk System. "Blue Ocean clearly demonstrates the U.S. government's commitment to remaining at the forefront of supercomputing expertise," said Surjit Chana, vice president, marketing, IBM eServer pSeries. "The IBM eServer supercomputer's power and flexibility give NAVOCEANO the ability to tackle the most complex computing challenges." The IBM eServer p690 Announced in October 2001, the IBM eServer p690 is based on IBM's POWER4 microprocessor, a system on a chip containing two one-gigahertz-plus processors, a high-bandwidth system switch, a large memory cache and I/O. This unique design enables the server to conserve energy and dramatically outperform servers that have more than twice as many processors. The POWER4 chips are packaged in ultra-dense building blocks called multi-chip modules, which provides the equivalent processing power of much larger system boards in other high-end UNIX(R) servers, while consuming less electricity. The p690 is the only UNIX server that offers multiple layers of self-healing technologies, allowing the server to continue operating -- even through major failures and system errors.