View source for Sequoia (supercomputer)

{{Infobox custom computer
| Image          = [[File:Sequoia6.1000pix.jpg|frameless]]
| Caption        = 
| Dates          = 
| Operators      = LLNL
| Sponsors       = 
| Location       = Livermore, California,<br />United States
| Architecture   = 
| Memory         = 1.5 [[Pebibyte|PiB]]
| Storage        = 
| Speed          = 20.13 PFLOPS
| Power          = 7.9 MW
| OS             = [[Software:CNK operating system|CNK operating system]]<br />[[Software:Red Hat Enterprise Linux|Red Hat Enterprise Linux]]
| Space          = {{convert|3000|sqft|m2}}
| Cost           = Unknown<ref>{{cite web|title=IBM US nuke-lab beast 'Sequoia' is top of the flops|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/top_500_supercomputers_june_2012/|website=The Register}}</ref>
| ChartName      = 
| ChartPosition  = 
| ChartDate      = 
| Purpose        = Nuclear weapons, [[Astronomy|astronomy]], [[Astronomy:Energy|energy]], [[Biology:Human genome|human genome]], and [[Earth:Climate change|climate change]]
| Legacy         = 
| Emulators      = 
| Website        = 
| Sources        = 
}}

'''IBM Sequoia''' is a [[Petascale computing|petascale]] Blue Gene/Q [[Supercomputer|supercomputer]] constructed by [[Company:IBM|IBM]] for the [[Physics:National Nuclear Security Administration|National Nuclear Security Administration]] as part of the [[Company:Advanced Simulation and Computing Program|Advanced Simulation and Computing Program]] (ASC). It was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2011 and was fully deployed in June 2012.<ref>[https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2009/NR-09-02-01.html NNSA awards IBM contract to build next generation supercomputer], February 3, 2009</ref>

On June 14, 2012, the [[TOP500]] Project Committee announced that Sequoia replaced the K computer as the world's fastest supercomputer, with a [[Software:LINPACK|LINPACK]] performance of 17.17 petaflops, 63% faster than the K computer's 10.51 petaflops, having 123% more cores than the K computer's 705,024 cores. Sequoia is also more energy efficient, as it consumes 7.9&nbsp;MW, 37% less than the K computer's 12.6&nbsp;MW.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.top500.org/lists/2012/06/press-release |title=TOP500 Press Release: Lawrence Livermore’s Sequoia Supercomputer Towers above the Rest in Latest TOP500 List |publisher=TOP500 |date=July 14, 2012 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69mzfDhru?url=http://www.top500.org/lists/2012/06/press-release |archivedate=August 9, 2012 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18457716 |title=BBC News – IBM supercomputer overtakes Fujitsu as world's fastest |publisher=BBC News |date= June 18, 2012 |author=Naveena Kottoor}}</ref>

{{As of|November 2017}}, Sequoia had dropped to sixth place on the TOP500 ranking, while it was at third position on June 17, 2013, behind Tianhe-2 and [[Titan (supercomputer)|Titan]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.top500.org/blog/lists/2013/06/press-release/ |title= China’s Tianhe-2 Supercomputer Takes No. 1 Ranking on 41st TOP500 List |publisher=TOP500 |date=June 17, 2013}}</ref> In June 2016, it slipped again, to fourth place on the TOP500 ranking.<!--<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.top500.org/list/2016/06/|title=Top500 List – June 2016 |publisher=TOP500 |date=July 2016}}</ref>--> In June 2017, it slipped again, to fifth place on the TOP500 ranking.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.top500.org/news/top500-list-refreshed-us-edged-out-of-third-place/ |title=TOP500 List Refreshed |publisher=TOP500 |date=June 2017 }}</ref>

Record-breaking science applications have been run on Sequoia, the first to cross 10 petaflops of sustained performance. The cosmology simulation framework HACC achieved almost 14 petaflops with a 3.6 trillion particle benchmark run,<ref>{{ cite arXiv | eprint=1211.4864| title=The Universe at Extreme Scale: Multi-Petaflop Sky Simulation on the BG/Q |author1=S. Habib |author2=V. Morozov |author3=H. Finkel |author4=A. Pope |author5=K. Heitmann |author6=K. Kumaran |author7=T. Peterka |author8=J. Insley |author9=D. Daniel |author10=P. Fasel |author11=N. Frontiere |author12=Z. Lukic | class=cs.DC | year=2012 }}</ref> while the Cardioid code,<ref>{{ cite web | url=http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=2992 | title=Cardioid Cardiac Modeling Project}}</ref><ref>{{ cite web | url=https://str.llnl.gov/Sep12/streitz.html| title=Venturing into the Heart of High-Performance Computing Simulations}}</ref> which models the electrophysiology of the human heart, achieved nearly 12 petaflops with a near real-time simulation.

The entire supercomputer runs on Linux, with [[Software:CNK operating system|CNK]] running on over 98,000 nodes, and [[Software:Red Hat Enterprise Linux|Red Hat Enterprise Linux]] running on 768 I/O nodes that are connected to the [[Company:Lustre (file system)|Lustre]] filesystem.<ref>{{cite web |title=IBM supercomputer overtakes Japan's Fujitsu as world's fastest |work=TechSpot |url=http://www.techspot.com/news/49026-ibm-supercomputer-overtakes-japans-fujitsu-as-worlds-fastest.html |date=June 18, 2012 }}</ref>

==Dawn prototype==
IBM built a prototype, called '''"Dawn"''', capable of 500 teraflops, using the Blue Gene/P design, to evaluate the Sequoia design. This system was delivered in April 2009 and entered the Top500 list at 9th place in June 2009.<ref>[http://top500.org/system/ranking/9900 Dawn Ranking History] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101201143722/http://top500.org/system/ranking/9900 |date=December 1, 2010 }}</ref>

==Purpose==
Sequoia will be used primarily for nuclear weapons simulation, replacing the current Blue Gene/L and [[ASC Purple]] supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sequoia will also be available for scientific purposes such as [[Astronomy|astronomy]], [[Astronomy:Energy|energy]], lattice QCD, study of the [[Biology:Human genome|human genome]], and [[Earth:Climate change|climate change]].

==Design==

===Node architecture===
Sequoia is a Blue Gene/Q design, based on previous Blue Gene designs. It consists of 96 [[19-inch rack|racks]] containing 98,304 compute nodes, i.e., 1024 per rack. The compute nodes are 16-core [[IBM A2|A2]] processor chips with 16&nbsp;[[Gigabyte|GB]] of DDR3 memory each. Thus, the system contains a total of 96·1024·16 = 1,572,864 processor cores with 1.5&nbsp;[[Pebibyte|PiB]] memory. It covers an area of about {{convert|3000|sqft|m2}}. The compute nodes are interconnected in a 5-dimensional [[Torus interconnect|torus]] topology.

===Job scheduler===
LLNL will use the SLURM job scheduler, which is also used by the Dawn prototype and China's Tianhe-IA, to manage Sequoia's resources.<ref>[https://hpcrd.lbl.gov/scidac09/talks/Seager-Sequoia4SciDACv1.pdf Multi-Petascale Computing on the Sequoia Architecture] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807145429/https://hpcrd.lbl.gov/scidac09/talks/Seager-Sequoia4SciDACv1.pdf |date=August 7, 2011 }} June 17, 2009</ref>

===Filesystem===
LLNL uses [[Company:Lustre (file system)|Lustre]] as the parallel filesystem, and has ported [[ZFS]] to Linux as the Lustre OSD (Object Storage Device) to take advantage of the performance and advanced features of the filesystem.<ref>[http://zfsonlinux.org/docs/LUG11_ZFS_on_Linux_for_Lustre.pdf ZFS on Linux for Lustre] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141031152502/http://zfsonlinux.org/docs/LUG11_ZFS_on_Linux_for_Lustre.pdf |date=October 31, 2014 }} April 13, 2011, Brian Behlendorf, LLNL</ref>

In September 2011, [[Company:NetApp|NetApp]] announced that the DoE had selected the company for 55&nbsp;PB of storage.<ref>[http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20110928-990734.html U.S. Department of Energy Selects NetApp as the Storage Foundation for One of the World’s Most Powerful Supercomputers], September 28, 2011</ref><ref>{{YouTube|c5ASf53v4lI|Sequoia's 55PB Lustre+ZFS Filesystem}}, April 24, 2012, RichReport</ref>

===Power usage===
The complete system will draw about 6&nbsp;[[Watt#Megawatt|MW]] of power but is projected to have an unprecedented efficiency in [[Performance per watt|performance per watt]]. The Sequoia design will perform 3000&nbsp;Mflops/watt, about 7 times as efficient as the Blue Gene/P design it is replacing, and more than 3 times as efficient as a prior (June 2011) Top 500 leader.<ref>[http://www.top500.org/lists/2011/06 The Top500 List – June 2011]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110703094255/http://www.green500.org/lists/2011/06/top/list.php The Green500 List – June 2011]</ref>

==Application==
In January 2013, the Sequoia set the record for the first supercomputer using more than one million computing cores at a time for a single application. The Stanford Engineering's Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) used it to solve a complex [[Physics:Fluid dynamics|fluid dynamics]] problem{{snd}} the prediction of noise generated by a supersonic jet engine.<ref name="Standford20130125">[http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-break-million-core-supercomputer-barrier "Stanford Researchers Break Million-core Supercomputer Barrier"]''Standford Engineering'', January 25, 2013.</ref><ref name="StandfordEngineeringVideos">{{YouTube|user=stanfordeng|title=''Stanford engineering Videos''}}, January 30, 2013.</ref>

==See also==
* IBM Mira
* Blue Gene
* [[Roadrunner (supercomputer)|IBM Roadrunner]]
* [[TOP500]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110526004140/http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/press/us/en/pressrelease/26599.wss 20 petaflop Sequoia Supercomputer]
* [https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/bgp/ Using the Dawn BG/P System]

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{{S-bef|before=K computer<br />10.51 petaflops}}
{{S-ttl
 | title = [[TOP500|World's most powerful supercomputer]]
 | years = June 2012&nbsp;– November 2012
}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Titan (supercomputer)|Titan]]<br />17.59 petaflops}}
{{S-end}}

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[[Category:Supercomputers]]

{{Sourceattribution|Sequoia (supercomputer)|1}}