QCDOC: A 10 teraflops computer for tightly-coupled calculations

P. A. Boyle, D. Chen, N. H. Christ, M. Clark, S. Cohen, Zhihua Dong, A. Gara, Balint Joo, Chulwoo Jung, L. Levkova, Xiaodong Liao, Guofeng Liu, R. D. Mawhinney, S. Ohta, K. Petrov, T. Wettig, A. Yamaguchi, C. Cristian

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Numerical simulations of the strong nuclear force, known as quantum chromodynamics or QCD, have proven to be a demanding, forefront problem in high-performance computing. In this report, we describe a new computer, QCDOC (QCD On a Chip), designed for optimal price/performance in the study of QCD. QCDOC uses a six-dimensional, low-latency mesh network to connect processing nodes, each of which includes a single custom ASIC, designed by our collaboration and built by IBM, plus DDR SDRAM. Each node has a peak speed of 1Gigaflops and two 12,288node, 10+ Teraflops machines are to be completed in the fall of 2004. Currently, a 512 node machine is running, delivering efficiencies as high as 45% of peak on the conjugate gradient solvers that dominate our calculations and a 4096-node machine with a cost of $1.6M is under construction. This should give us a price/performance less than $1per sustained Megaflops.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the ACM/IEEE SC 2004 Conference
Subtitle of host publicationBridging Communities
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)0769521533, 9780769521534
DOIs
StatePublished - 2004
Externally publishedYes
Event2004 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, SC 2004 - Pittsburgh, United States
Duration: Nov 6 2004Nov 12 2004

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM/IEEE SC 2004 Conference: Bridging Communities

Conference

Conference2004 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, SC 2004
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPittsburgh
Period11/6/0411/12/04

Funding

FundersFunder number
U.S. Department of Energy

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