Sun Constellation System Explained

Sun Constellation System is an open petascale computing environment introduced by Sun Microsystems in 2007.

Main hardware components

• Sun Blade 6048 Modular System
  • Sun Blade X6275
  • Sun Blade X6270
• Sun Blade 6000 System
• Sun Datacenter Switch 3456
• Sun Fire X4540
• Sun Cooling Doors (5200,5600)

Software stack

• OpenSolaris or Linux
• Sun Grid Engine
• Sun Studio Compiler Suite
• Fortress (programming language)
• Sun HPC ClusterTools (based on Open MPI)
• Sun Ops Center

Services

• Sun Datacenter Express Services

Production systems

Ranger at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) was the largest production Constellation system. Ranger had 62,976 processor cores in 3,936 nodes and a peak performance of 580 TFlops.^{[1] [2]} Ranger was the 7th most powerful TOP500 supercomputer in the world at the time of its introduction.^[3] After 5 years of service at TACC, it was dismantled and shipped to South Africa, Tanzania, and Botswana to help foster HPC development in Africa.^[4]

A number of smaller Constellation systems are deployed at other supercomputer centers, including the University of Oslo.^[5]

External links

• Sun Constellation System at Sun.com
• Sun Constellation System at SC07 (YouTube Video)

Notes and References

1. Web site: TACC > HPC Systems . 2007-12-13 . The University of Texas at Austin . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090801102108/http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/resources/hpcsystems/#ranger . 2009-08-01.
2. Web site: More Ranger Facts and Figures. 2016-06-18. Sun Microsystems.
3. Web site: TOP500 List - November 2008. 2010-08-11. TOP500.Org.
4. Web site: Ranger Supercomputer Begins New Life. The University of Texas at Austin. 2014-07-14. 2016-05-04. Jorge. Salazar.
5. Web site: HPC Consortium: University of Oslo. 2008-06-17. 2016-06-18. Sun Microsystems.