High Capability System: SC5832
The SiCortex SC5832 is the first computer architecture to recognize that high sustained performance and low power are synergistic, not antagonistic. The enormous heat generated by contemporary processor chips may not matter to personal computer users but it causes serious problems in high performance computing, where every watt of wasted power is multiplied by hundreds or thousands of nodes.
The SiCortex 5832 is the first and only computer system of the 21st century to pack Top500 performance onto a single backplane. It offers 5,832 1.4GFlops 64-bit processors, each dissipating just 900 milliwatts of power. All interprocessor communications logic plus two DDR-2 memory controllers and PCI Express I/O logic are on the same node chip with the multiple processor cores. Complete with its 8 Terabytes of system memory, the SC5832 fits in a single cabinet and only requires around 20 kilowatts of wall power.
The design insight that makes this possible is that low power and sustained high performance are synergistic. Specifically, the two meet at density. And because the communications fabric is simpler, more of the system's total logic goes into processing power. In addition, the system's dual on-node DDR-2 memory controllers enable the system to routinely keep twice as many memory references in flight as competitive architectures.
As high performance computer system users awaken to the fact that “heat” is just another term for performance degradation, they are looking for systems that get it out of their way. They are looking for the SC5832.
