Parallel superconductor code on the iPSC/860

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an application code for calculating the electronic properties and energetics of disordered materials. The same source code has been compiled and run on workstations, Crays, and the Intel iPSC/860. This electronic structures code is capable of running at over 2 gigaflops on both an 8-processor CRAY Y-MP and a 128-processor Intel iPSC/860. Using this new KKR-CPA code, we executed density-of-state computations of a perovskite superconductor at a rate of 2527 megaflops on the Intel iPSC/860. This corresponds to a price/performance rate of 842 megaflops per $1 million based on the list price of this computer. Similar but smaller computations done on a network of ten IBM RS/6000 workstations executed at a price/performance rate of 1.3 gigaflops per $1 million.