Why Albert2 is more than just 512 processors in 10 boxes

HOW DO you build Europe's No: 1 supercomputer - BMW Sauber's Albert2? It's a tad more complicated than putting 512 Intel Dual Core 5160 processors into ten enclosures - according to its maker, Dalco.

The Swiss company claims to be the leading manufacturer of supercomputers that use standard components. At a press event sponsored by Intel, Dalco's vp of sales and marketing, Franklin Dallman, had to confess that his company uses AMD processors, too.

Albert2's real secret, however, lies in the way memory is shared between the processors and the use of a high-speed backbone.

The tricky bit is to get all the processors working in parallel and operating as close to 100 per cent of their load capability, Dallman said. Intriguingly all of this is done using 64 bit SUSE Linux as the OS.

All of that computing power creates more than a little amount of heat, so BMW Sauber has used highly specialised cabinets supplied by APC.

It has also helped that Peter Sauber - who built the wind tunnel that BMW Sauber uses in Hinwil, Switzerland - also created a giant chilled water tank, to cool the tunnel.

Albert can therefore take advantage of that facility to run cool.

Incidentally, Intel has confirmed that the Xeon (Woodcrest) 5160 processors that are used inside Albert2 could be replaced with Xeon 5300 Quad Core processors. And that the minimum increase in computing power would be around 32 per cent, according to its estimates.

As a bizarre comparison, Dalco says that 1.3 million people (equivalent to the total population of Munich) multiplying two eight digit numbers together every 3.5 seconds for a year would just about match what Albert2 can do in one second. µ

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