NHSE Review^TM 1996 Volume First Issue

Overview of Recent Supercomputers

| <- HREF="node9.html" Prev | Index | Next -> |
NHSE Review^TM: Comments · Archive · Search

3.1.1 The Hitachi S3600 series.

System parameters:

Remarks:

The speed differences between the different models stem from replication of the multiply/add pipe in the models S3600/120-180. The /160 and /180 models have respectively two- and four-fold sets of a separate add- and a multifunctional multiply/add vector pipes. This should lead to a maximum of 3 results per clock cycle per pipe set. So, contrary to the information given by the vendor, the maximum performance of, e.g., the /180 should in some situations be 3 Gflop/s instead of 2.

Note that the clock cycle of the scalar processor is twice that of the VPU. The memory bandwidth from the memory from/to the CPU is 2 operands per clock cycle (via 1 load and 1 load/store pipe per arithmetic pipe set), which is somewhat less than optimal. It is not possible to load two operands and store one result in one cycle. The /120 model lacks a separate load pipe, only a load/store pipe is present.

A unique feature of the S3600, as in its direct predecessor the S-820, is that all machines of the series are air cooled. All other machines in this class relied at least on water cooling.

Unlike the S-820 series, the S3600 series is also marketed worldwide, not only in Japan. This is also the case for the S3800 SM-MIMD machines (3.3.2).

Measured performances: In [2] a speed of 851 Mflop/s for the solution of a full linear system of order 1000 is reported for the S3600/160. The S3600/180 attains a performance of 1672 Mflop/s on the same problem.

Copyright © 1996 Aad J. van der Steen and Jack J. Dongarra

| <- HREF="node9.html" Prev | Index | Next -> |
NHSE Review^TM: Comments · Archive · Search
NHSE: Software Catalog · Roadmap