By:

Shikha Mulley
Introduction
The word "supercomputer" entered the mainstream lexicon in
1996 and 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer
challenged the world chess champion in two tournaments
broadcast around the world.

Since then, IBM has been busy improving its supercomputer

technology and tackling much deeper problems.

Their latest project, code named Blue Gene, is poised to shatter

all records for computer and network performance.
What is a Super Computer?
A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current
processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.

Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs

produced by "traditional" companies such as Cray, IBM and Hewlett-
Packard, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain
their experience.
Why we need Super Computers?
Supercomputers are very useful in highly calculation-intensive
tasks such as
• Problems involving quantum physics, 
• Weather forecasting,
• Climate research, 
• Molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties
of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules,
polymers, and crystals),
• Physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind
tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear
weapons, and research into nuclear fusion).
Why we need Super Computers?
•Also, they are useful for a particular class of problems, known
as Grand Challenge problems, full solution for such problems
require semi-infinite computing resources.
NASA’s Linux-based Super Computer
Why Supercomputers are Fast
Several elements of a supercomputer contribute to its high level
of performance:
– Numerous high-performance processors (CPUs) for parallel processing
– Specially-designed high-speed internal networks
– Specially-designed or tuned operating systems
 What is Blue gene?
Blue Gene is a computer architecture project designed to
produce several supercomputers that are designed to reach
operating speeds in the PFLOPS (petaFLOPS = 1015) range, and
currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS
(teraFLOPS = 1012).

It is a cooperative project among IBM(particularly IBM

Rochester and the Thomas J. Watson Research Center),
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the United States
Department of Energy (which is partially funding the project),
and academia.
* Computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system.
* FLOPS (or flops or flop/s) is an acronym meaning FLoating point Operations Per Second.
Why Blue Gene?
Blue Gene is an IBM Research project dedicated to exploring the
frontiers in supercomputing:
- in computer architecture,
- in the software required to program and control massively parallel
systems, and
- in the use of computation to advance the understanding of important
biological processes such as protein folding.

Learning more about biomolecular mechanisms is expected to

give medical researchers better understanding of diseases, as
well as potential cures.
Why the name Blue gene?
“Blue” - The corporate color of IBM

“Gene” - The intended use of the Blue Gene clusters was for
Computational biology.
Blue Gene Projects
There are four Blue Gene projects in development:
- Blue Gene/L,
- Blue Gene/C,
- Blue Gene/P, and
- Blue Gene/Q.
Blue Gene/L
The first computer in the Blue Gene series, is Blue Gene/L.
It is developed through a partnership with Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL).

The term Blue Gene/L sometimes refers to the computer

installed at LLNL; and sometimes refers to the architecture of
that computer.

As of November 2006, there are 27 computers on

the Top500 list using the Blue Gene/L architecture.
Blue Gene/L Super Computer
History of Blue gene/L
In December 1999, IBM announced a $100 million research
initiative for a five-year effort to build a massively parallel
computer, to be applied to the study of biomolecular
phenomena.

The project has two main goals:

- to advance understanding of the biomolecular
mechanisms via large-scale simulation, and
- to explore novel ideas in massively parallel machine
architecture and software

* Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out
simultaneously,
History of Blue gene/L
In November 2001, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory joined IBM as a research partner for Blue Gene.

Blue Gene/L is also the first supercomputer ever to run over

100 TFLOPS sustained on a real world application.
This achievement won the 2005 Gordon Bell Prize.

In November 2007, the LLNL Blue Gene/L remained at the

number one spot as the world's fastest supercomputer.
 System
Blue Gene/L Overview Rack 64 Racks
65,536 chips
32 node cards
Scalable from 1 rack to 64 racks 1,024 chips
Rack has 2048 processors with 512 MB or 1
GB DRAM/node

Node card
180/360 TF/s
32 chips 32 TB
16 compute, 0-2 IO cards
2.8/5.6 TF/s
512 GB
Compute node

2 chips

90/180 GF/s
Chip 16 GB November 2006 Top500 List www.top500.org
2 processors
2 in Top10 (#1 and #3)
5.6/11.2 GF/s 9 in Top30
1.0 GB 16 in Top100
2.8/5.6 GF/s 27 overall in Top150

16
Blue Gene/L Architecture
Each compute node has two 700MHz PowerPC 440 embedded
processors

Each of the dual processors on the compute node has two

"floating point units (FPU)," engines for performing
mathematical calculations.

The dual FPUs give each Blue Gene/L node a theoretical peak
performance of 5.6GFLOPS (gigaFLOPS).
Blue Gene/L Architecture
Compute nodes are packaged two per compute card, with 16
compute cards plus up to 2 I/O nodes per node board.

There are 32 node boards per cabinet/rack. 

By integration of all essential sub-systems on a single chip, each

Compute or I/O node dissipates low power (about 17 watts,
including DRAMs).
One Blue Gene/L nodeboard
Blue Gene/C (Cyclops64)
Blue Gene/C (now renamed to Cyclops64) is a sister-project to
Blue Gene/L.

It is a massively parallel, supercomputer-on-a-chip cellular

architecture.

The Cyclops64 project aims to create the

first "supercomputer on a chip".
Blue Gene/C (Cyclops64)
Cyclops64 exposes much of the underlying hardware to the
programmer, allowing the programmer to write very high
performance, finely tuned software.

One negative consequence is that efficiently programming

Cyclops64 is difficult.

The theoretical peak performance of a Cyclops64 chip is

80 gigaflops 
Blue Gene/P
On June 26, 2007, IBM unveiled Blue Gene/P, the second
generation of the Blue Gene supercomputer.

Designed to run continuously at 1PFLOPS (petaFLOPS), it can be

configured to reach speeds in excess of 3 PFLOPS.

It is at least seven times more energy efficient than any other

supercomputer, accomplished by using many small, low-power
chips connected through five specialized networks.
Blue Gene/P Architecture
Four 850 MHz PowerPC 450 processors are integrated on each
Blue Gene/P chip.

The 1-PFLOPS Blue Gene/P configuration is a 294,912-processor,

72-rack system harnessed to a high-speed, optical network.

Blue Gene/P can be scaled to an 884,736-processor, 216-rack

cluster to achieve 3-PFLOPS performance.

A standard Blue Gene/P configuration will house 4,096

processors per rack.
Blue Gene/Q
The last known supercomputer design in the Blue Gene
series, Blue Gene/Q is aimed to reach 20 Petaflops in the 2011
time frame.

It will continue to expand and enhance the Blue Gene/L and /P

architectures with higher frequency at much improved
performance per watt.
Conclusion
President Obama recognized IBM and its Blue Gene family of
supercomputers with the National Medal of Technology and
Innovation.

The influence of the Blue Gene supercomputer's energy-efficient

design and computing model can be seen today across the
Information Technology industry.

Today, 18 of the top 20 most energy efficient supercomputers in

the world are built on IBM high performance computing
technology.
Conclusion
Blue Gene has some unusual features, but IBM has tried as much
as possible to anchor the system to more mainstream
technology.

Blue Gene would influence the way in which mainstream

computers of the future are built.

Staying on the beaten path is the best way to take advantage of

technology that's improving fastest, and it also makes it easier to
create products out of the Blue Gene research.
Thank U !! 