Blue Gene

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Data sheet (754KB)

Highlights:

Offers scalable HPC power for complex, general-purpose science applications
Delivers high bandwidth, low latency performance for data-intensive applications
Helps reduce TCO, with lower energy consumption and a smaller footprint

Blue Gene/Q Fastest Supercomputer in the World

On June 18, an IBM Blue Gene/Q system received top honors as being the fastest supercomputer in the world as recorded by top500.org. Four of the top ten supercomputers are Blue Gene/Q systems. Blue Gene/Q systems also captured the top 20 spots of the most energy efficient systems in the world as measured by the greeen500.org ranking.

Our balanced approach to design enables delivery of high performance and energy efficient solutions to support breakthroughs in areas like life sciences, public safety and transportation that will make our world smarter.

Breakthrough science today—not tomorrow

Whether your work involves climate modeling, nuclear simulations or life sciences research and development, you have something in common: you work with huge data sets and need massive computing power without breaking the bank on energy costs. With IBM® Systems Blue Gene®/Q, completing computationally intensive projects for a wide variety of scientific applications that were previously unsolvable is not just possible, it is now probable.

Blue Gene/Q introduces innovative technologies to deliver exceptional performance, energy efficiency and ease of application portability. It reflects a key step in the ongoing evolution of Blue Gene supercomputers. An array of technical innovations in hardware, software and system design will enable Blue Gene/Q to achieve new levels of performance and energy efficiency while helping to simplify application portability and usability. By providing speed and bandwidth to keep platforms operating at the forefront of technology, Blue Gene/Q can help you accelerate leading-edge science to transform your scientific and research agendas.

Blue Gene/Q is specifically designed to help solve large-scale problems associated with the sciences. The third generation in the Blue Gene family of supercomputers, it works at an order of magnitude faster than previous systems, with 16 cores and a scalable peak performance up to 100 petaflops—a massive leap forward in parallel computing power. Applicable to a growing set of computationally intensive workloads within the scientific community, Blue Gene/Q is the ideal platform for highly complex projects in a broad range of areas.

Feature	Benefit
Each rack of Blue Gene/Q with 1,024 16-core compute nodes scales to 209 TFps peak, scalable to 512 racks	Highly scalable as a homogenous system for reduced complexity
Lightweight Compute Node Kernel (CNK) with Linux and POSIX compatibility, plus full Fortran, C, C++ compiler	Standards based environment protects your coding investments
Engineered with fewer moving parts and redundancy	Increased reliability and MTTF for increased productivity
Integrated and optimized management and monitoring tools	Improves operational performance for a wide variety of workloads and conditions.
Densely packaged with highly efficient water cooling	Energy efficient design helps reduce floor space needs and energy use

IBM System Blue Gene/Q at a glance

System configurations
Processor	IBM PowerPC® A2 1.6 GHz, 16 cores per node
Memory	16 GB SDRAM-DDR3 per node (1333 MTps)
Networks	5D Torus — 40 GBps; 2.5 μsec latency Collective network — part of the 5D Torus; collective logic operations supported Global Barrier/Interrupt — part of 5D Torus PCIe x8 Gen2 based I/O 1 GB Control Network — System Boot, Debug, Monitoring
I/O Nodes (10 GbE or InfiniBand)	16-way SMP processor; configurable in 8,16 or 32 I/O nodes per rack
Operating systems	Compute nodes — lightweight proprietary kernel
Power	Typical 80 kW per rack (estimated) 380-415, 480 VAC 3-phase; maximum 100 kW per rack; 4x60 amp service per rack
Cooling	90% water cooling (18-25°C, maximum 30 GPM); 10% air cooling
Acoustics	7.9 bels
Dimensions	Height: 2095 mm Width: 1219 mm Depth: 1321 mm Weight: 4500 lbs with coolant (LLNL 1 IO drawer configuration) Service clearances: 914 mm on all sides