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Encyclopedia > Columbia (supercomputer)
NASA's 10,240-processor Columbia supercomputer is built from 20 SGI Altix systems, each powered by 512 Itanium 2 processors. Columbia is housed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility in Mountain View, California.

Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. The supercomputer was installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility in 2004. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1050x696, 164 KB) This images is one of many taken by Silicon Graphics, Incorporated, the credit that must be given for them is: otherwise they are apperently free for any other use. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1050x696, 164 KB) This images is one of many taken by Silicon Graphics, Incorporated, the credit that must be given for them is: otherwise they are apperently free for any other use. ... The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nations public space program. ... A supercomputer is a computer that led the world in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ... Altix is Silicon Graphicss line of servers and supercomputers. ... Itanium 2 logo The Itanium 2 is an IA-64 64-bit microprocessor developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Intel, and introduced on July 8, 2002. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ... The NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility (often abbreviated as NAS) is located at the NASA Ames Research Center, located in Moffett Field, California (near Mountain View, California). ... For the community near Martinez, California, see Mountain View, Contra Costa County, California. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ... A supercomputer is a computer that led the world in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ... Silicon Graphics, Inc. ... The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nations public space program. ... The NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility (often abbreviated as NAS) is located at the NASA Ames Research Center, located in Moffett Field, California (near Mountain View, California). ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...


According to the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers, it entered the list in November 2004 at position 2,[1] running at 51.87 teraflops, or 51.87 trillion floating point calculations per second. By June 2007 it had dropped to position 13. It is composed of twenty SGI Altix 3000 nodes each of which have 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors bringing the total number of processors to 10,240. It has 20 terabytes of RAM, 440 terabytes of storage, and 10 petabytes of archive storage.[2] It was named in honor of the crew STS-107, who were killed in the Columbia disaster. The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known computer systems in the world. ... In computing, FLOPS (or flops) is an acronym meaning FLoating point Operations Per Second. ... A floating-point number is a digital representation for a number in a certain subset of the rational numbers, and is often used to approximate an arbitrary real number on a computer. ... Altix is Silicon Graphicss line of servers and supercomputers. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC; SEHK: 4335) is the worlds largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in many personal computers. ... Itanium 2 logo The Itanium 2 is an IA-64 64-bit microprocessor developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Intel, and introduced on July 8, 2002. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ... The STS-107 crewmembers strike a ‘flying’ pose for their traditional in-flight crew portrait in the SPACEHAB aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. ... The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earths atmosphere, shortly before concluding its 28th mission, STS-107. ...


The SGI Altix platform was selected due to a positive experience with Kalpana, a single Altix 512-CPU system operated by NASA Ames which was integrated into the Columbia supercomputer system. Kalpana is a supercomputer at NASAs Ames Research Center operated by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division (NAS). ...


The computers are connected together with a Voltaire InfiniBand ISR 9288 288 port switch with transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits (or 1250 megabytes) per second, 10 gigabit Ethernet and multiple 1 gigabit Ethernet nodes. InfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link primarily used in high-performance computing. ... A network switch is a computer networking device that connects network segments. ... A gigabit is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated Gbit or sometimes Gb. ... ReBoot character, see Megabyte (ReBoot). ...


References

  1. ^ November 2006 - TOP500 Supercomputing Sites. TOP500. Retrieved on 2007-05-22.
  2. ^ Columbia System Facts. NASA (2007-01-31). Retrieved on 2007-03-27.

Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. The supercomputer was installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility in 2004. The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known computer systems in the world. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 142nd day of the year (143rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 86th day of the year (87th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...


According to the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers, it entered the list in November 2004 at position 2,[1] running at 51.87 teraflops, or 51.87 trillion floating point calculations per second. By June 2007 it had dropped to position 13. It is composed of twenty SGI Altix 3000 nodes each of which have 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors bringing the total number of processors to 10,240. It has 20 terabytes of RAM, 440 terabytes of storage, and 10 petabytes of archive storage.[2] It was named in honor of the crew STS-107, who were killed in the Columbia disaster.


The SGI Altix platform was selected due to a positive experience with Kalpana, a single Altix 512-CPU system operated by NASA Ames which was integrated into the Columbia supercomputer system.


The computers are connected together with a Voltaire InfiniBand ISR 9288 288 port switch with transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits (or 1250 megabytes) per second, 10 gigabit Ethernet and multiple 1 gigabit Ethernet nodes.


External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Columbia (supercomputer)
  • NASA Columbia homepage
  • TOP500 entry
  • "One Giant Leap" – SGI information on the construction of Columbia (image gallery)
  • Press release from SGI
  • Press release from NASA
The Columbia Supercomputer at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Facility at Ames Research Center
The Columbia Supercomputer at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Facility at Ames Research Center

Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. The supercomputer was installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility in 2004. Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2100x1524, 3508 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Supercomputer NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility Computer/Temp ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2100x1524, 3508 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Supercomputer NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility Computer/Temp ...


According to the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers, it entered the list in November 2004 at position 2,[1] running at 51.87 teraflops, or 51.87 trillion floating point calculations per second. By June 2007 it had dropped to position 13. It is composed of twenty SGI Altix 3000 nodes each of which have 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors bringing the total number of processors to 10,240. It has 20 terabytes of RAM, 440 terabytes of storage, and 10 petabytes of archive storage.[2] It was named in honor of the crew STS-107, who were killed in the Columbia disaster.


The SGI Altix platform was selected due to a positive experience with Kalpana, a single Altix 512-CPU system operated by NASA Ames which was integrated into the Columbia supercomputer system.


The computers are connected together with a Voltaire InfiniBand ISR 9288 288 port switch with transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits (or 1250 megabytes) per second, 10 gigabit Ethernet and multiple 1 gigabit Ethernet nodes.


  Results from FactBites:
 
NASA - NASA Unveils Its Newest, Most Powerful Supercomputer (759 words)
Columbia was named to honor the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia lost Feb. 1, 2003.
"With Columbia, scientists are already seeing dramatic improvements in the fidelity of simulations in such areas as hurricane track prediction, global ocean circulation, prediction of large scale structures in the universe, and the physics of supernova detonations," he said.
Columbia already is enabling scientists to conduct research and analyze complex data much faster in a variety of scientific disciplines.
supercomputer. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05 (326 words)
Supercomputers are very expensive and are employed for specialized scientific and engineering applications that must handle very large databases or do a great amount of computation, among them meteorology, animated graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research and weapon simulation, and petroleum exploration.
This technique was employed in the Earth Simulator, a Japanese supercomputer introduced in 2002 that utilizes 640 nodes composed of 5104 specialized processors to execute 35.6 trillion mathematical operations per second; it will be used to analyze earthquake and weather patterns and climate change, including global warming.
In 2003 scientists at Virginia Tech assembled a relatively low-cost supercomputer using 1,100 dual-processor Apple Macintoshes; it was ranked at the time as the third fastest machine in the world.
  More results at FactBites »


 
 

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