Sounds like IBM GFS should be on our distributed file system eval list... > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], LSST Data Management <[email protected]> > Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:04:24 -0500 (EST) > To: LSST Data Management <[email protected]> > Subject: [LSST-data] IBM ASC Purple Pitches A Supercomputing Fastball at > 102GB/s > > FYI .... see article below .... > > Researchers for the project say this kind of computing could be applied > to different applications. "You can imagine the kind of problems you > can solve with this, like a tsunami warning device that would scrutinize > huge amounts of information from the ocean and then analyze that quite > quickly, or for homeland security applications, where you need to scan > images of people and match those images against large databases." > > ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- > > IBM ASC Purple Pitches A Supercomputing Fastball at 102GB/s > > http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/350825/6388/11567/0/ > http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2006/0,4814,109369,00.html > > MARCH 09, 2006 - (IDG NEWS SERVICE) -- IBM Thursday said it had developed > technology to speed up the way large computer networks access and share > information. Under a project code-named Fastball, IBM's ASC Purple > supercomputer has been able to achieve 102GB/s of sustained read-and-write > performance to a single file -- the equivalent of downloading 25,000 songs > in a second over the Internet, according to the company. > > IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) software was used to manage > the transfer of data between thousands of processors and disk storage > devices. IBM said it had to enhance the software in several areas to > handle such fast data rates. > > For example, it used new fencing techniques to prevent individual hardware > failures from causing the overall system to fail and added new capabilities > to orchestrate flow control between all of the different hardware components > in the system. "If they all go real fast at the same time, you get a traffic > jam and performance goes down," said Chris Maher, director of high-performance > computing development for IBM's Systems and Technology Group. > > ASC Purple, the world's third most powerful supercomputer according to the > Top500 list, is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which > demonstrated the Fastball project capabilities. IBM supplied the computer to > the U.S. Department of Energy and the lab for use in nuclear weapons research. > > The Fastball project combined IBM servers, a high-performance computing > switch network and storage subsystems tied together through the enhanced > version of the GPFS software. IBM used 416 individual storage controllers > combined with 104 Power-based eServer p575 nodes. > > In the Fastball demonstration, 1,000 clients requested a single file > at the same time. Through virtualization techniques, the software then > spread that file across hundreds of disk drives. The resulting file > system was 1.6 petabytes in size. > > Researchers for the project say this kind of computing could be applied > to different applications. > > "You can imagine the kind of problems you can solve with this, like a > tsunami warning device that would scrutinize huge amounts of information > from the ocean and then analyze that quite quickly, or for homeland > security applications, where you need to scan images of people and match > those images against large databases," Maher said. "Other applications > could include medical research and online gaming," Maher said. > > A future area of focus is for developers to create ways to match appropriate > storage resources to data automatically, as data is generated based on > predefined policies, Maher said. > > _______________________________________________ > LSST-data mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.lsstmail.org/mailman/listinfo/lsst-data >
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