Blue Gene

Blue Gene is an IBM supercomputer project intended to be the largest supercomputer in the world. Costing $100M, the first computer in the Blue Gene series, the Blue Gene/L, is intended to have a total of 65,000 processors and an estimated total computing power of 200 teraflops.

The Blue Gene computer architecture is designed to scale to speeds of up to one petaflop.

In public relations terms, it is being positioned as the successor of IBM's Deep Blue chess computer, however it bears little architectural resemblance to Deep Blue.

It will use the Linux operating system, and feature 16 CPUs per processor module, and have some of the processor memory integrated in the same modules as the CPUs. Each processor will be attached to three parallel communications networks: a 3D toroidal network[?] for peer-to-peer communication, a tree network[?] for collective communication, and an Ethernet network for booting and diagnostics.

With so many processors and disks, even with the use of high reliability components with long MTBF, components will be failing constantly. Thus, the system will need to be self-healing during operation if extended computations are to be undertaken.

External links

• IBM announcement (http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/)
• CNET story: It's Linux for IBM supercomputer project (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-963285)
• More detailed presentation of Blue Gene architecture (http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/BG_External_Presentation_January_2002.pdf) (in pdf format)