Editing ASCI Red

{{Use American English|date = March 2019}}
{{Short description|Supercomputer}}
{{Use mdy dates|date = March 2019}}
{{infobox custom computer
| Image          = Asci red - tflop4m.jpeg
| Caption        = ASCI Red as seen from inside Sandia Labs
| Website        = [https://web.archive.org/web/20110926225845/http://www.sandia.gov/ASCI/Red/ web.archive.org]
| Dates          = Two-Thirds Operational March 1997, Fully Operational June 1997,<ref name="ASCI">{{cite web|last=Thomas |first=Robert |title=ASCI Red Homepage |url=http://www.sandia.gov/ASCI/Red/ |publisher=Sandia National Laboratories |access-date=30 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110926225845/http://www.sandia.gov/ASCI/Red/ |archive-date=September 26, 2011 }}</ref> decommissioned 2006<ref name="decom">{{cite web|url=https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2006/asci-red-decom.html|access-date=2014-05-26|date=2006-06-29|title=Sandia's ASCI Red, world's first teraflop supercomputer, is decommissioned|website=sandia.gov|archive-date=September 29, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130929083624/https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2006/asci-red-decom.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>
| Location       = [[Sandia National Laboratories]], [[United States]]
| Sponsors       = [[Intel Corporation]]<ref name=ASCI/>
| Operators      = [[Sandia National Laboratories]], [[US Department of Energy]]
| Architecture   = 
| Memory         = 1212 [[gigabytes]]
| Storage        = 
| Speed          = 1.3 [[teraflops]] (peak)<ref name=ASCI/>
| OS             = Cougar / TOS (a [[Mach (kernel)|Mach kernel]] derivative)
| Power          = 850 kW
| Space          = {{convert|1600|ft2|abbr=on}}<ref name="MIT">{{cite web|last=Mattson|first=Timothy|title=An Overview of the Intel TFLOPS Supercompute|url=http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/aries/course/notes/ascii_red.pdf|publisher=MIT|access-date=30 October 2011}}</ref> 
| Cost           = 
| ChartName      = [[TOP500]]
| ChartPosition  = 1
| ChartDate      = June 2000<ref name="top500">{{cite web|title=TOP500.org Ranking History for ASCI Red |url=http://top500.org/system//4428 |work=TOP500 Supercomputer Sites |access-date=29 October 2011}}</ref> 
| Purpose        = nuclear materials testing, other
| Legacy         = First Supercomputer to achieve over 1.0 [[teraflops]] on [[LINPACK]] test
| Emulators      = 
| Sources        = 
}}

'''ASCI Red''' (also known as '''ASCI Option Red''' or '''TFLOPS''') was the first computer built under the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative ([[Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative|ASCI]]),<ref name="Sandia">{{cite web|last=Mattson |first=Timothy |title=The ASCI Option Red Supercomputer |url=http://www.sandia.gov/ASCI/Red/papers/Mattson/OVERVIEW.html |access-date=27 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100528051556/http://www.sandia.gov/ASCI/Red/papers/Mattson/OVERVIEW.html |archive-date=28 May 2010 }}</ref><ref name="Garg">{{cite book|last=Garg|first=Sharad|chapter=Performance Evaluation of Parallel File Systems for PC Clusters and ASCI Red |publisher=IEEE|doi=10.1109/CLUSTR.2001.959973|title=Proceedings 2001 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing|pages=172–177|year=2001|isbn=0-7695-1116-3|s2cid=13224481 }}</ref> the [[supercomputing]] initiative of the [[United States government]] created to help the maintenance of the [[The United States and weapons of mass destruction#Nuclear weapons|United States nuclear arsenal]] after the 1992 moratorium on [[nuclear testing]].

ASCI Red was built by Intel and installed at [[Sandia National Laboratories]] in late 1996.  The design was based on the [[Intel Paragon]] computer.  The original goals to deliver a true teraflop machine by the end of 1996 that would be capable of running an ASCI application using all memory and nodes by September 1997 were met.<ref name="cug.org">{{cite web|title=7X Performance Results – Final Report: ASCI Red vs. Red Storm|url=http://www.cug.org/5-publications/proceedings_attendee_lists/2008CD/S08_Proceedings/pages/Authors/06-10Tuesday/Vaughn-9A/Stevenson-Tuesday9A/Stevenson-Tuesday9A-paper.pdf|access-date=17 November 2011}}</ref>
It was used by the US government from the years of 1997 to 2005 and was the world's fastest supercomputer until late 2000.<ref name="top500"/><ref name=Garg/> It was the first ASCI machine that the Department of Energy acquired,<ref name=Garg/> and also the first supercomputer to score above one [[teraflops]] on the [[LINPACK]] benchmark, a test that measures a computer's calculation speed. Later upgrades to ASCI Red allowed it to perform above two teraflops.

ASCI Red earned a reputation for reliability that some veterans say has never been beaten. Sandia director Bill Camp said that ASCI Red had the best reliability of any supercomputer ever built, and “was supercomputing’s high-water mark in longevity, price, and performance.”
<ref name="jacobsequity.com">{{cite web|title=Sandia's ASCI Red, world's first teraflop supercomputer, is decommissioned |url=http://www.jacobsequity.com/downloads/ASCIRedSupercomputer.pdf|access-date=8 January 2013}}</ref>

ASCI Red was decommissioned in 2006.<ref name="decom" />

== System structure ==

The ASCI Red supercomputer was a distributed memory [[Multiple instruction, multiple data|MIMD]] (Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data) message-passing computer.  The design provided a high degree of scalability for I/O, memory, compute nodes, storage capacity, and communications; standard parallel interfaces also made it possible to port parallel applications to the machine.  The machine was structured into four partitions: Compute, Service, I/O, and System.  Parallel applications executed in the Compute Partition which contained nodes optimized for floating point performance.  The compute nodes had only the features required for efficient computation – they were not purposed for general interactive services.  The Service Partition provided an integrated, scalable host that supported interactive users (login sessions), application development, and system administration. The I/O Partition supported disk I/O, a scalable parallel file system and network services. The System Partition supported initial booting and system Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) capabilities.<ref name="cug.org"/>

The Service partition helps integrate all of the different parts of ASCI Red together. It provides a scalable host for users, and it is used for general system administration.<ref name="ASCI"/> The I/O Partition provides a file system and network services, and the Service partition is made up of the log-in screens, tools for application development, and utilities for network connections.<ref name="Sandia"/> The Compute partition contains nodes that are designed for floating point performance. This is where the actual computing takes place.<ref name="Sandia"/> Every one of the compute nodes accommodated two 200&nbsp;MHz [[Pentium Pro|Pentium Pro processors]], each with a 16 KB [[CPU cache|level-1 cache]] and a 256 KB [[CPU cache|level-2 cache]], which were upgraded later to two 333&nbsp;MHz [[Pentium OverDrive#Socket 8|Pentium II OverDrive processors]], each with a 32 KB [[CPU cache|level-1 cache]] and a 512 KB [[CPU cache|level-2 cache]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.top500.org/featured/systems/asci-red-sandia-national-laboratory/ | title=TOP500.org feature page on the ASCI Red of the Sandia National Laboratory | access-date=2016-01-08 | archive-date=January 9, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160109013948/http://www.top500.org/featured/systems/asci-red-sandia-national-laboratory/ | url-status=dead }}</ref> According to [[Intel]], the ASCI Red Computer is also the first large scale supercomputer to be built entirely of common commercially available components.<ref name="tree">{{cite journal|last=Warren|first=Michael|title=Pentium Pro Inside: I. A Treecode at 430 Gigaflops on ASCI Red, II. Price/Performance of $50/Mflop on Loki and Hyglac|pages=61|journal=Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Conference|publisher=IEEE|doi=10.1109/SC.1997.10057|date=November 1997|s2cid=13167835 }}</ref>

All of ASCI Red's partitions are interconnected to form one supercomputer, however at the same time none of the nodes support [[shared memory (interprocess communication)#In hardware|global shared memory]]. Each of the nodes works in its own memory, and each shares data with the others through "explicit message-passing".<ref name="Brightwell">{{cite book 
 | doi = 10.1109/CLUSTR.2003.1253322
 | isbn = 0-7695-2066-9
| chapter = A performance comparison of Linux and a lightweight kernel
| title = Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing CLUSTR-03
| pages = 251–258
| year = 2003
| last1 = Brightwell
| last2 = Riesen
| last3 = Underwood
| last4 = Hudson
| last5 = Bridges
| last6 = MacCabe
| s2cid = 7454194
}}</ref>

== Technical specifications ==

The computer itself took up almost {{convert|1600|sqft}} of space,<ref name=MIT/> and was made up of 104 "cabinets". Of those cabinets, 76 are computers (processors), 8 are switches, and 20 are disks. It had a total of 1212 GB of RAM, and 9298 separate processors.
The original machine used Intel Pentium Pro processors each clocked at 200&nbsp;MHz. These were later upgraded to specially packaged Pentium II Xeon processors, each clocked at 333&nbsp;MHz. Overall, it required 850&nbsp;kW of power (not including air conditioning).  What sets ASCI Option Red aside from all of its predecessors in supercomputing is its high [[input/output|I/O]] [[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]]. Previous supercomputers had multi-[[GFLOPS]] performance, yet their slow I/O speeds would slow down, or bottleneck the systems. Intel's TFLOPS [[List of file systems#Distributed parallel file systems|PFS]] is an extremely efficient "Parallel File System" that can sustain transfer speeds of up to 1 GB/s, eliminating bottlenecks.<ref name="PFS">{{cite book|last=Garg|first=Sharad|chapter=TFLOPS PFS: Architecture and Design of A Highly Efficient Parallel File System |publisher=IEEE|doi=10.1109/SC.1998.10003|title=Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM SC98 Conference|pages=2|year=1998|isbn=0-8186-8707-X|s2cid=8683745 }}</ref>

== First to TFLOPS ==

In December, 1996, three quarters of ASCI Red was measured at a world record 1.06 TFLOPS on MP LINPACK and held the record for fastest supercomputer in the world for several consecutive years, maxing out at 2.38 TFLOPS after a processor and memory upgrade in 1999.<ref name="top500"/><ref name="cug.org"/>
The system used [[Pentium Pro]] processors when initially constructed and when it recorded performance above one TFLOPS. In that configuration, when fully built it recorded 1.6 TFLOPS of performance. Upgrades later in 1999, to specially packaged Pentium II Xeon processors, pushed performance to 3.1 TFLOPS.<ref name="jacobsequity.com"/>

== Operating system ==

The different partitions of ASCI Red run on different [[operating system]]s. For example, users of the computer work in an environment called "Teraflops OS", an operating system (once called Paragon OS) that was originally developed for the [[Intel Paragon|Intel Paragon XP/S]] Supercomputer.<ref name=Sandia/> ASCI Red's Compute partition runs on an [[operating system]] named Cougar.<ref name="Brightwell"/> Cougar is a Sandia Labs and University of New Mexico collaboration; it is a [[lightweight kernel operating system|lightweight OS]] based on PUMA and [[SUNMOS]], two systems that were also designed for use on the Paragon supercomputer.<ref name="Brightwell"/> It consists of a light weight kernel, the Process Control Thread, and other utilities and libraries.  The [[Linux]] 2.4 kernel was ported to the system and a custom CNIC driver was written, but the heavy weight OS did not perform as well as the Cougar lightweight kernel on many benchmarks.<ref name=Brightwell />

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

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{{S-bef|before=[[Hitachi SR2201|CP-PACS/2048]]<br />368.20 gigaflops}}
{{S-ttl
 | title = [[TOP500|World's most powerful supercomputer]]
 | years = June 1997&nbsp;– June 2000
}}
{{s-aft|after=[[ASCI White]]<br />4.938 teraflops}}
{{S-end}}
{{Intel}}
[[Category:X86 supercomputers]]
[[Category:Intel]]
[[Category:Sandia National Laboratories]]
[[Category:32-bit computers]]
[[Category:Intel supercomputers]]