Engineering Presentation

1. CAUVERY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Topic on: “IBM- BLUE GENE
TECHNOLOGY”.
PRESENTED BY:
ANUSHA .N
[4CA21CS010]

2. INTRODUCTION:
 The word “supercomputer”, entered the mainstream lexicon in 1996
and 1997 when IBMs deep blue supercomputer challenged the world
chess champion in two tournaments broadcast around the world.
 Since then, IBM has been busy improving its supercomputer technology
and tackling much deeper problems.
 Their latest project ,code named blue gene ,is poised to shatter all
records for computer and network performance.

3. WHAT IS A SUPER COMPUTER
 A supercomputer is a computer that is at
the frontline of current processing capacity
, particularly speed of calculation.
 Today , supercomputer are typically one-
of-a kind custom designs produced by
“traditional” companies such as cray ,
IBM and Hewlett-Packard, who had
purchased many of the 1980’s companies
to gain their experience.

4. WHY WE NEED SUPER COMPUTERS?
Supercomputer are very useful in highly calculation-intensive takes such as
 Problems involving quantum physics,
 Weather forecasting
 Climate research
 Molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical
compounds, biological macromolecules ,polymers, and crystals)
 Physical simulations(such as simulation of airplanes in wind
tunnels ,simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons, and research
into nuclear fusion).
 Also, they are useful for a particular class of problems ,known as grand
challenge problems, full solution for such problems require semi-infinite
computing resources.

5. WHY SUPERCOMPUTERS ARE FAST?
 Several elements of a supercomputer contribute
to its high level of performance:
 Numerous high-performance processors(CPUs)
for parallel processing.
 Specially –designed high-speed internal
networks.
 Specially –designed or tuned operating systems.

6. WHAT IS BLUE GENE?
Blue gene is a computer architecture project designed to produce
several supercomputers that are designed to reach operating speeds
in the PFLOPS(petaFLOPS=10^12).
 It is a cooperative project among IBM(particularly IBM Rochester
and the Thomas J. Watson research center), the Lawrence livemore
national laboratory , the united states department of energy (which
is partially funding the project ), and academia.

7. WHY BLUE GENE ?
Blue brain is an IBM research project dedicated to exploring the frontiers in supercomputing:
 In computer architecture,
 In the software required to program and control massively parallel systems .
 In the use of computation to advanced the understanding of important biological
processes such as protein folding.
 Learning more about biomolecular mechanisms is expected to give medical researches
better understanding of diseases, as well as potential cures.

8. WHY THE NAME BLUE GENE ?
 “Blue”- the corporate color of IBM
 “Gene”- the intended use of the blue gene clusters was for
computational biology.

9. BLUE GENE PROJECT:
There are four blue gene projects in development:
 Blue gene /L
 Blue gene/C
 Blue gene/P
 Blue gene/Q

10. BLUE GENE/L :
 The first computer in the blue gene series, is
Blue Gene/L.
 It is developed through a partnership with
Lawrence Livermore national laboratory.
(LLNL)
 The term blue gene/L Sometimes referd to the
computer installed at LLNL; and sometimes
refers to the architecture of that computer.
 As of November 2006, there are 27 computers
on the top500 list using the Blue Gene/L
architecture.

11. HISTORY OF BLUE GENE/L:
 In December 1999,IBM announced a $100 million research initiative for a five –
year effort to built a massively parallel computer , to be applied to the study of
biomolecular phenomena.
The project has two main goals:
 To advanced understanding of the biomolecular mechanisms via large-scale
simulation.
 To explore novel ideas in massively parallel machine architecture and
software.

12. BLUE GENE/L OVERVIEW:

13. BLUE GENE/L ARCHITECTURE:
 Compute nodes are packaged two per
compute card, with 16 compute cards plus up
to 21/O nodes per node board.
 There are 32 nodes boards per cabinet/rack.
 By integration of all essential sub-systems on a
single chip, each compute or I/O node
dissipates low power (about 17 watts,
including DRAMs).

14. BLUE GENE/C (Cyclops64)
 Cyclops64 exposes much of the underlying hardware to the
programmer, allowing the programmer to write very high
performance , finely tuned software.
 One negative consequence is that efficiently programming
cyclops64 is difficult.
 The theoretical peak performance of a cyclops64 chip is 80
gigaflops.

15. BLUE GENE /P:
 On June 26,2007 , IBM unveiled Blue Gene/P, the second generation of the
blue gene supercomputer.
 Designed to run continuously at 1PFLOPS ( peta FLOPS), it can be configured
to reach speeds in excess of 3 PFLOPS.
 It is at least seven times more energy efficient than any other
supercomputer ,accomplished by using many small, low-power chips
connected through five specialized networks.

16. CONCLUSION:
 President Obama recognized IBM and its blue gene family of supercomputers
with the national medal of technology and innovation.
 The influence of the blue gene supercomputers energy-efficient design and
computing model can be seen today across the information technology
industry .
 Today ,18 of the top 20 most energy efficient supercomputer in the world are built
on IBM high performance computing technology.
 Blue gene has some unusual features, but IBM has tired as much as possible to
anchor the system to more mainstream technology.
 Blue gene would influence the way in which mainstream computers of the future
are built.