SiCortex
Encyclopedia
SiCortex is a supercomputer
manufacturer founded in 2003 and headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts
. On 27 May 2009, HPCwire reported that the company had shut down its operations, laid off most of its staff, and is seeking a buyer for its assets. The Register
reported that Gerbsman Partners was hired to sell SiCortex's intellectual properties. While SiCortex had good sales, selling at least 75 supercomputers to large customers, the company had not produced an operating profit and ran out of venture capital. New funding could not be found due to the financial crisis.
The company built and marketed a family of clusters
of between 12 and 972 compute nodes, connected in a Kautz graph. The clusters are the SC5832, SC648 and SC072. It was reported that the company has been working on the next generation of clusters since March 2009, but development ceased when operations were closed.
The SC5832 is a high-end model housed in a cabinet. It has 972 nodes, 5,832 cores and 972 to 7,776 GB of memory. It uses a diameter-6 Kautz graph for 2,916 links. The SC648 is a mid-range model housed in a standard 19-inch rack. Each rack may contain two systems. It has 108 nodes, 648 cores and 108 to 864 GB of memory. It uses a diameter-4 Kautz graph for 324 links. The SC072 is a desktop model for developing software.
Each node is system-on-chip (SoC), codenamed ICE9, consisting of six cores
that implement the MIPS64
instruction set architecture (ISA). Each core has a 32 KB instruction cache and a 32 KB data cache. The six cores have their own 256 KB L2 cache, which can be accessed by other cores. The MIPS cores execute instructions in-order and have a six stage pipeline. They can issue and execute two instructions per cycle for peak double-precision (64-bit) performance of 1 GFLOPS at 500 MHz. This was later increased to 1.4 GFLOPS when the clock frequency of the SoC was increased to 700 MHz when the SoC was fabricated in a 90 nm process. The SoC contains two DDR2 memory controllers, each controlling a single DIMM. Each node can have 1 to 8 GB of memory. The SoC also implements a 8x PCI Express controller. The cluster interconnect is implemented by a DMA engine fabric switch. Each cluster interconnect provides a maximum bandwidth of 2 GB/s.
Message passing, via MPI
, is the presumptive programming model. SiCortex systems run a customized Linux
distribution derived from Gentoo Linux
.
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
manufacturer founded in 2003 and headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts
Maynard, Massachusetts
Maynard is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 10,106.- History :Maynard, located on the Assabet River, was incorporated as an independent municipality in 1871. Prior to that it was known as 'Assabet Village' but was legally...
. On 27 May 2009, HPCwire reported that the company had shut down its operations, laid off most of its staff, and is seeking a buyer for its assets. The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
reported that Gerbsman Partners was hired to sell SiCortex's intellectual properties. While SiCortex had good sales, selling at least 75 supercomputers to large customers, the company had not produced an operating profit and ran out of venture capital. New funding could not be found due to the financial crisis.
The company built and marketed a family of clusters
Cluster Computing
Cluster Computing: the Journal of Networks, Software Tools and Applications is a journal for parallel processing, distributed computing systems, and computer communication networks....
of between 12 and 972 compute nodes, connected in a Kautz graph. The clusters are the SC5832, SC648 and SC072. It was reported that the company has been working on the next generation of clusters since March 2009, but development ceased when operations were closed.
The SC5832 is a high-end model housed in a cabinet. It has 972 nodes, 5,832 cores and 972 to 7,776 GB of memory. It uses a diameter-6 Kautz graph for 2,916 links. The SC648 is a mid-range model housed in a standard 19-inch rack. Each rack may contain two systems. It has 108 nodes, 648 cores and 108 to 864 GB of memory. It uses a diameter-4 Kautz graph for 324 links. The SC072 is a desktop model for developing software.
Each node is system-on-chip (SoC), codenamed ICE9, consisting of six cores
Multicore
Multicore may refer to:* Multi-core processor ** Multicore Association, founded in 2005, a non-profit, industry consortium focused on multicore technology* multicore cable, a generic term for an electrical cable that has multiple cores...
that implement the MIPS64
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
instruction set architecture (ISA). Each core has a 32 KB instruction cache and a 32 KB data cache. The six cores have their own 256 KB L2 cache, which can be accessed by other cores. The MIPS cores execute instructions in-order and have a six stage pipeline. They can issue and execute two instructions per cycle for peak double-precision (64-bit) performance of 1 GFLOPS at 500 MHz. This was later increased to 1.4 GFLOPS when the clock frequency of the SoC was increased to 700 MHz when the SoC was fabricated in a 90 nm process. The SoC contains two DDR2 memory controllers, each controlling a single DIMM. Each node can have 1 to 8 GB of memory. The SoC also implements a 8x PCI Express controller. The cluster interconnect is implemented by a DMA engine fabric switch. Each cluster interconnect provides a maximum bandwidth of 2 GB/s.
Message passing, via MPI
Message Passing Interface
Message Passing Interface is a standardized and portable message-passing system designed by a group of researchers from academia and industry to function on a wide variety of parallel computers...
, is the presumptive programming model. SiCortex systems run a customized Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
distribution derived from Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
.
Hardware Models
| Model # | Nodes | Codename | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SC5832 | 972 | Blizzard | 36 blades |
| SC1458 | 243 | Hail | 9 blades |
| SC648 | 108 | Snow | 4 blades |
| SC162 | 27 | Sleet | a single blade |
| SC72 "Catapult" | 12 | Flurry | Standard Workstation for Application Development |
| SC24 | 4 | Frost | Diagnostic Board |