NSF Award
0085206
The Pittburgh Supercomputer Center (PSC), a jointly supported venture of The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University acting through the MPC Corporation, in collaboration with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, will put in place a 6 peak teraflop computing system for use by US researchers in all science and engineering disciplines. The system will be provided by Compaq, based on a cluster of 686 4-processor Alpha 21264 based SMP nodes and Quadrics ELAN4 interconnects; it will have 2.7 terabytes of memory, 25 terabytes of local disk and 160 terabytes of global disk. The system will be deployed in two stages. The initial system will consist of ES40 systems with 16 nodes arriving in September 2000. In October the system will be upgraded to 64 nodes and be available in friendly user mode. This would form the basis of a relatively stable production environment for a modest number of users and will remain in service until the final system is completed in October 2001. Delivery of the final TCS system to PSC will begin in May although a 256-node test system will be available in December 2000 at Compaq. A 256-node system will be installed at PSC in June 2001 followed by a steady increase in size to about 618 nodes in September 2001. The conversion of the initial system to complete the final 686-node system in October 2001. Allocations will be managed by the existing PACI National Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC).
