Transcript History of Supercomputers at IBM

History of Computing at IBM
by Brian Ho
CS147 – Dr. Sin-Min Lee
Fall 2009
Brief Overview of IBM
 IBM stands for International Business
Machines Corporation.
 Founded in 1896 in Endicott, NY
Herman Hollerith
 His punch card tabulating
technology was used for
the 1890 census, saving the
U.S. government $5 mil.
 Punch cards become the
industry standard of input
for the next 70 years.
 His company was later
merged into what is now
IBM.
Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
 Became president of IBM
(then C-T-R) in 1914.
 Built IBM into a global
corporation by investing in
his employees and
research.
 Hired disabled WWI vets
to work for IBM.
1944 ASCC
 The world’s first largescale calculating computer.
 Automatic Sequence
Control Calculator, a.k.a.
Mark I.
 Used electromagnetic
relays to solve addition
problems in < 1 second,
multiplication in 6 seconds,
and division in 12 seconds.
1946 – The IBM 603
 The IBM 603 Electronic
Multiplier, the first
commercial product to
incorporate electronic
arithmetic circuits.
 Used vacuum tubes.
 Part of a program to make
“super calculators”
 Would perform faster than
the ASCC.
1946 – Chinese Character
Typewriter
 WHOA!
 Chinese ideographic
character typewriter.
 Experienced users
could type at a rate
of 40 to 45 Chinese
words per minute.
WHOA!
Must have
been hard
to use!
 Had over 1,000 characters engraved in a cylinder
1948 – IBM SSEC
 IBM’s first large-scale
digital calculating machine.
 It was the first computer
that could modify a stored
program.
 Contained 12,000 vacuum
tubes and 21,000
electromechanical relays.
1948 – IBM 604
 First assemblage of
digital electronics
replaceable as a unit.
 Service engineers
could pull out a
defective unit and plug
in a replacement,
saving time.
Thomas Watson, Jr.
 Became president of
IBM in 1952
 Moved IBM away
from punch cards and
into electronic
computers.
1952 – IBM 701 and
First CA Research Lab
 IBM’s first production
computer.
 Designed primarily for
scientific calculations.
 Featured a tape drive
vacuum column, which
paved the way for
magnetic tape to become a
popular storage medium.
 First West Coast lab is
opened in San Jose, CA.
Magnetic Storage Devices
1953 – IBM 650 Magnetic
Drum Calculator
 The most popular
computer of the 1950s.
 Purchased by
universities and
businesses for
scientific computation
and accounting
capabilities.
1954 – NORC
 The fastest, most
powerful electronic
computer of its time.
 Naval Ordnance
Research Computer
 Built for the U.S. Navy
Bureau of Ordnance
1959 – IBM 1401
 The first high-volume,
stored program, corememory, transistorized
computer.
 Included the IBM 1403
printer.
1961 – 7030 STRETCH
 IBM’s first attempt in the
supercomputer industry.
 Amdahl said it would not meet
the performance requirement the
government asked for.
 When it did not meet the
requirements in Los Alamos
Nation Laboratories in New
Mexico,
 Watson rebated the profit and
development cost to the
government until it could meet
the performance requirements.
IBM 7030 STRETCH (continued)
 Pioneered advanced systems concepts:
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Lookahead
Pipelining
Use of transistors
Use of bytes
1962 - SABRE
 Semi-Automatic BusinessRelated Environment
 Two IBM 7090
mainframes formed the
backbone of the SABRE
reservation system for
American Airlines.
 Linked high-speed
computers and data
communications in more
than 50 cities.
1964 – IBM SYSTEM/360
 Incorporated the IBM
Solid Logic
Technology (SLT)
microelectronics
 Uses the same
programming
instructions.
 Created a family of
compatible computers.
1980 – RISC in IBM
 IBM Fellow John
Cocke came up with
RISC architecture
 Reduced Instruction
Set Computer
 IBM’s first prototype
employing RISC, the
IBM 801
1985 – Token Ring Network
 Allowed printers and
computers to be
connected on a
network.
 Became the industry
standard
1990 – RISC System/6000
 A family of 9
workstations that are
some of the fastest in
the industry.
 Were able to improve
because of RISC
architecture
1997 – Deep Blue
 Beat the reigning world
grandmaster of chess
Garry Kasparov in
1997.
 First time a computer
ever beat a world
champion in a six game
match.
Blue Gene
IBM’s Super Computer Project
Blue Gene
 Its name is an allusion to
IBM’s nickname “Big
Blue” and the corporation’s
official color: blue.
 a computer architecture
project designed to produce
supercomputers with
operating speeds in the
petaFLOPS range.
Blue Gene/L
 Developed in
partnership with
Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory
(LLNL)
 Started in 1999
 Was to be applied to
protein folding
Blue Gene/L (continued)
 Is a massively parallel
computer.
 Utilizes 8 cabinets, each
holding 1,024 computer
nodes
 Was upgraded to 16
cabinets in 2004, achieving
70.72 TFLOPS
 Upgraded again multiple
times, resulting in 64 total
cabinets in 2005
Blue Gene/P
 Unveiled in 2007
 Designed to run
continuously at 1
PFLOPS.
 Features a 72-rack
system that can be
scaled to an 884,736processor, 216-rack
cluster
 In its 216-rack
configuration, it can
achieve 3-PFLOPS
performance
 To be succeeded by
Blue Gene/Q, due to
reach 20 PFLOPS in
2011.
IBM Roadrunner
 Fastest supercomputer
in the world.
 Achieved 1.456
PFLOPS on May 25,
2008.
 Built for U.S.
Department of Energy
(DOE)
IBM Roadrunner (continued)
 Uses a series of
TriBlades
 A TriBlade consists of:
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2 dual-core Opterons
with 16 GB RAM
4 PowerXCell 8i CPUs
with 16 GB Cell RAM
A bunch of other stuff