IBM 9076 SP1 - Wildhorse
IBM
In use: August 1, 1993 - September 1, 1995
Experimental use
Peak teraflops: 0.00
Processors: 8.00
Clock speed: 0.06GHz
Memory (terabytes): 0.00TB
The IBM 9076 SP1, IBM's first scalable parallel machine, was installed at NCAR in August 1993. It was acquired with funds from the National Science Foundation's High-Performance Computing and Communications program.
The NCAR SP1 – named “Wildhorse” – belonged to a new generation of products based on IBM RISC System/6000 technology, providing users with simultaneous parallel and serial processing capabilities. The SP1 was experimental and used to evaluate performance and ease of use for parallel processing of large simulations.
The SP1 consisted of a server node plus a frame containing eight processor nodes. The server node was an IBM RS/6000 Model 980 with 512 megabytes of memory, 4 gigabytes of internal disk space, 8 gigabytes of external disk space, and communications facilities.
All of the processor nodes were IBM RS/6000 Model 370s containing 128 megabytes of memory and 1 gigabyte of internal disk space. The SP1 additionally had an IBM RS/6000 Model 220 that functioned as a system monitor. The machine had a single-processor speed of ~26 megaflops, and an estimated 15% efficiency.
Software included math libraries, the Distributed Queueing System for submitting batch jobs, Cray conversion routines, the Fortran 90 XLF compiler, and Parallel Virtual Machine.
Wildhorse was decommissioned in September 1995.