National Facility
Current Peak System
The current peak system is a Sun Constellation high-density integrated cluster. A summary of its specifications and a comparison its capability with that of its immediate antecedent are shown in the table below.
|
|
SGI Altix 3700 Bx2(2005–Sept 2009)  |
Sun Constellation (Vayu)(April 2010– )  |
|
CPUs/Cores |
1920 (Intel Itanium2 1.6 GHz) |
11936 (Intel Xeon 2.93 GHz - Nehalem series) |
|---|---|---|
|
Main memory |
5.5 Tbytes |
36 Tbytes (7x) |
|
Storage |
40 Tbytes |
800 Tbytes (20x) |
|
Performance Peak |
14 TFlops |
140 TFlops (10x) |
|
Sustained |
21K SPECFP_rate |
240K SPECFP_rate (12x) |
|
Resources |
16.8M hrs p.a. |
110M hrs p.a. (6.5x) |
|
Power |
approx 300 kW |
approx 605 kW (2x) |
The specifications listed above for the Sun Constellation are those for the completed facility which was commissioned in April 2010. Between September and December 2009, only the first phase of the new facility, having one eight of the performance of the full system, was available.
A comprehensive summary of the specification of “vayu” is given at http://nf.nci.org.au/facilities/vayu/hardware.php.
In addition to the high-performance systems, the National Facility resources include a comprehensive software library (see http://nf.nci.org.au/facilities/software/), mass storage systems, visualisation systems and data communications, and is staffed by a highly-regarded support team.
Applications for access are made using the forms for Merit Allocation Projects.
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