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By Steve Fisher, Editor In Chief -- Earlier this week, Compaq announced the AlphaServer SC45 system. Billed as a scalable, single-image supercomputer, the SC45 can scale up to huge systems that include thousands of processors (such as the TeraScale System at PSC) delivering multiple TFLOPS of performance. To learn more, Supercomputing Online interviewed Kent Koeninger of Compaq's High Performance Technical Computing marketing organization. Supercomputing: Please provide the readers with some technical details about the new SC 45. KOENINGER: AlphaServer SC Series -- The most usable and scalable terascale supercomputer system -- Single-System-Image features including SSI parallel-scalable file systems, SSI administration, and SSI resource management, providing single-system scalability from 25 GFLOPS to multiple TFLOPS. The current largest system has 6 TFLOPS of peak performance distributed across 3040 processors, 8.9 times higher peak performance than the original AlphaServer SC40. This is the Terascale-1 system (TCS-1) at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and is the largest non-military computer installed in the world. Technical components: •Fast Alpha EV68 64-bit processors (1 GHz) •High memory bandwidth (8 GB/s per 4-processor node) •Large memories (32 GB per node - terabytes per system) •High message-passing bandwidth (over 500 MB/s per node) •Over 1.8 GB/s of total IO bandwidth per node Supercomputing: Can I have one? KOENINGER: Yes, you may purchase one now. SC45 systems have been shipping for months, with several terascale systems already installed and running (Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, CEA-France, Los Alamos National Lab, ...). Supercomputing: As far as scientific computing research efforts are concerned, what areas of research do you feel will benefit the most from a system such as the SC45? KOENINGER: The SC45 will be used to tackle the most computationally challenging research topics, such as life sciences (including genetics), material sciences, national security, automotive safety, coupled structures and fluids, general relativity, quantum chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, QCD, etc. Supercomputing: I know that a partner of ours the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has an SC45 system with 3,000 processors. Is there a scalability limit as far as the SC45's "single system image" is concerned? KOENINGER: There is no hard technology limit for the scalability of the multiple multi-TFLOPS systems we have already delivered and we have even larger systems already in the pipeline. Multi-TFLOPS systems obviously push the limits and each system is sized for the individual customers requirements. Supercomputing: What commercial markets does Compaq plan to go after with this system? KOENINGER: AlphaServer SC45 systems are engineered specifically for the High Performance Technical Computing markets. The commercial off the shelf (COTS) AlphaServer components, such as the AlphaServer ES45 compute nodes, are used in many commercial markets. Supercomputing: Who do you see as your competition with this system? How does the SC45 differentiate itself. How about the recently announced Origin 300? Both systems seem to be involved in what I referred to as "rackmountable supercomputing" in an article last week. KOENINGER: The four major players in the HPTC market are Compaq, HP, IBM, and Sun. Of these, only IBM offers systems that scale to the size of AlphaServer SC systems. The AlphaServer SC45 systems have superior sustained floating-point performance, memory bandwidth, I/O, and message-passing performance, all coordinated as a single system image. It is used by leading government, university, and industry HPTC centers for science and engineering, with scalability from tens of GFLOPS to the fastest terascale computing systems in the world. The Origin 300 is a lower-end offering for limited-scalability situations. The AlphaServer product line has many mid-range offerings, including 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 processor systems and scalable clusters based on these systems. The AlphaServer SC45 systems scale from 25 GFLOPS (16 processors) to multiple TFLOPS. Supercomputing: Is there anything you'd like to add? KOENINGER: Compaq is #1 in the HPTC market, leading in revenue (according to the IDC year 2000 report). Compaq has delivered over a half-dozen terascale systems to the HPTC market. This is terascale delivered, not just technology promises. Compaq delivers systems from palmtops to teraflops. ---------- Supercomputing Online wishes to thank Kent Koeninger for his time and insights. It would also like to thank Compaq’s Jim Dunlap for his assistance. ----------