For several years, Dr. D. K. Panda has proudly noted that the software MVAPICH, developed in his Network Based Computing Lab (NOWLAB), has helped power faster computers on the TOP500 list. But, the most recent list marks the highest entrance yet. The National Science Foundation's powerful new supercomputer, "Stampede," being built at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin, achieved the rank of 7th fastest on the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites. This is particularly exciting for all the teams invoved as the TACC Stampede system is still half operational (the complete system will be operational by Jan '13 timeframe). It is built with 204,900 cores and is currently delivering 2.66 Petaflop performance using MVAPICH2. This system uses InfiniBand FDR and the new Intel MIC accelerators.
Upon completion in 2013, Stampede will be one of the world's most powerful supercomputers. At its initial peak performance, it will process at 10 petaflops, contain 272 terabytes (272,000 gigabytes) of total memory, and handle 14 petabytes (14 million gigabytes) of disk storage. Eventually, Intel will be adding new generations of MIC processors which will then allow Stampede to clock at 15 petaflops.
MVAPICH/MVAPICH2 (pronounced em-va-pich) software delivers best performance, scalability and fault tolerance for high-end computing systems and servers using InfiniBand, 10GigE/iWARP and RoCE networking technologies. All components of Stampede will be integrated with InfiniBand FDR 56G/bs network. MVAPICH improves the processing by connecting traditional supercomputing software with innovative networking technologies and protocols, thus increasing the data flow speed in a significant manner.