glenn1
Lifer
From today's Wall Street Journal... codename "Red Storm."
AMD's New Opteron Chips Are Tapped for Red Storm
By DON CLARK, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Endorsing the technology of one of Intel Corp.'s key rivals, Sandia National Laboratories and Cray Inc. plan to build a massive supercomputer using a soon-to-be-introduced line of microprocessor chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., people familiar with the matter said.
The development project, estimated in June to cost $90 million, is a high-profile vote of confidence for AMD's new Opteron chip, in a small but prestigious market long dominated by other chip suppliers. It represents a missed opportunity for Intel, which has been targeting its new Itanium line at high-performance computing applications.
Red Storm, Sandia's name for the new supercomputer, also marks a step forward for the U.S. effort at leadership in supercomputers, which suffered a blow this year with the completion of a huge machine called the Earth Simulator by Japanese government agencies and NEC Corp. Where recent U.S. machines have largely been constructed out of components used in commercial computers, Cray is expected to develop special technology for connecting the AMD chips that should make Red Storm suited for more-complex scientific problems.
"This is a move away from commodity components," said Horst Simon, division director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a supercomputer facility affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "It's very exciting."
Sandia, which does research for the U.S. Department of Energy in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., has a performance goal of 100 trillion operations per second for Red Storm. It hasn't disclosed most technical details, including the chip selection. But Mr. Simon estimated that the machine will require 16,000 or more microprocessors to hit its speed target, which would appear to surpass the Earth Simulator's current performance.
Sandia said in June that it had selected Cray, a longtime supercomputer maker based in Seattle, to negotiate a development contract. Cray and Sandia officials didn't return calls seeking comment Friday, but they have scheduled a news conference for Monday in Albuquerque. AMD and Intel officials declined to comment.
AMD could use some good news. The company's Athlon chip line, mainly used in personal computers, has been falling behind the performance of comparable Intel chips. The company reported last week a third-quarter loss of $254 million on sales of $508.2 million, off 34% from the year-earlier period.
Opteron is a high-end member of the new line, code-named Hammer, that is due out next year and viewed by analysts as AMD's best hope for recovery. Like the Itanium, Hammer chips are designed to process 64 bits of information at a time, instead of 32 bits, a capability that helps run huge databases and solve scientific problems.
Intel's Itanium line, developed over eight years with help from Hewlett-Packard Co., is based on an entirely new architecture and achieves its best performance on new 64-bit programs. AMD, by contrast, made 64-bit additions to the original Intel technology used in the past by both companies.
The difference, AMD says, allows Hammer-based computers to run both 32-bit and 64-bit software at high speed. AMD released preliminary test results last week for Opteron -- so far not validated by outside researchers -- that show the chip exceeding Intel's latest Itanium 2 model on one of two widely-used speed measures, AMD said.
Itanium 2, introduced last summer, has already been selected for at least a half-dozen high-performance installations. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, another Department of Energy facility, is building a $24.5 million system based on 1,400 Itanium 2 chips. Based on past Sandia announcements, the Red Storm project's stated performance goal is more than 10 times that of the Pacific Northwest project.
AMD's New Opteron Chips Are Tapped for Red Storm
By DON CLARK, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Endorsing the technology of one of Intel Corp.'s key rivals, Sandia National Laboratories and Cray Inc. plan to build a massive supercomputer using a soon-to-be-introduced line of microprocessor chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., people familiar with the matter said.
The development project, estimated in June to cost $90 million, is a high-profile vote of confidence for AMD's new Opteron chip, in a small but prestigious market long dominated by other chip suppliers. It represents a missed opportunity for Intel, which has been targeting its new Itanium line at high-performance computing applications.
Red Storm, Sandia's name for the new supercomputer, also marks a step forward for the U.S. effort at leadership in supercomputers, which suffered a blow this year with the completion of a huge machine called the Earth Simulator by Japanese government agencies and NEC Corp. Where recent U.S. machines have largely been constructed out of components used in commercial computers, Cray is expected to develop special technology for connecting the AMD chips that should make Red Storm suited for more-complex scientific problems.
"This is a move away from commodity components," said Horst Simon, division director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a supercomputer facility affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "It's very exciting."
Sandia, which does research for the U.S. Department of Energy in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., has a performance goal of 100 trillion operations per second for Red Storm. It hasn't disclosed most technical details, including the chip selection. But Mr. Simon estimated that the machine will require 16,000 or more microprocessors to hit its speed target, which would appear to surpass the Earth Simulator's current performance.
Sandia said in June that it had selected Cray, a longtime supercomputer maker based in Seattle, to negotiate a development contract. Cray and Sandia officials didn't return calls seeking comment Friday, but they have scheduled a news conference for Monday in Albuquerque. AMD and Intel officials declined to comment.
AMD could use some good news. The company's Athlon chip line, mainly used in personal computers, has been falling behind the performance of comparable Intel chips. The company reported last week a third-quarter loss of $254 million on sales of $508.2 million, off 34% from the year-earlier period.
Opteron is a high-end member of the new line, code-named Hammer, that is due out next year and viewed by analysts as AMD's best hope for recovery. Like the Itanium, Hammer chips are designed to process 64 bits of information at a time, instead of 32 bits, a capability that helps run huge databases and solve scientific problems.
Intel's Itanium line, developed over eight years with help from Hewlett-Packard Co., is based on an entirely new architecture and achieves its best performance on new 64-bit programs. AMD, by contrast, made 64-bit additions to the original Intel technology used in the past by both companies.
The difference, AMD says, allows Hammer-based computers to run both 32-bit and 64-bit software at high speed. AMD released preliminary test results last week for Opteron -- so far not validated by outside researchers -- that show the chip exceeding Intel's latest Itanium 2 model on one of two widely-used speed measures, AMD said.
Itanium 2, introduced last summer, has already been selected for at least a half-dozen high-performance installations. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, another Department of Energy facility, is building a $24.5 million system based on 1,400 Itanium 2 chips. Based on past Sandia announcements, the Red Storm project's stated performance goal is more than 10 times that of the Pacific Northwest project.
