Windows on Computing New Initiatives at Los Alamos
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Windows on Computing New Initiatives at Los Alamos David W. Forslund, Charles A. Slocomb, and Ira A. Agins o aspect of technology is changing more rapidly than the field of computing and information systems. It is among the fastest growing and most competitive Narenas in our global economy. Each year, more of the items we use contain tiny microprocessors—silicon chips on which are etched hundreds or thousands or millions of electronic circuit elements. Those computer chips direct various operations and adjustments—automatic braking in cars; automatic focusing in cameras; automatic data collection in cash registers; automatic message- taking by answering machines; automatic operation of washers, dryers, and other appliances; automatic production of goods in manufacturing plants; the list could go on and on. Those inconspicuous devices that perform micro-scale computing are profoundly shaping our lives and our culture. Los Alamos Science Number 22 1994 Number 22 1994 Los Alamos Science 1 Windows on Computing Opening illustration: Elements of high-performance computing: Left, the CM-5 Connection a chip), had led to dramatic reductions Machine, the most powerful massively parallel supercomputer at Los Alamos; center, the foyer in the cost of producing powerful mi- in the Laboratory Data Communications Center (LDCC); upper right, digitized images of croprocessors and large memory units. Washington, D.C. from a wavelet-based multiresolution database developed at Los Alamos; As a result affordable personal comput- and lower right, a portion of a “metacomputer,” a 950,000-transistor special-purpose chip for ers and powerful workstations have be- analyzing the behavior of digital circuits. The chip is being developed by a team of graduate come commonplace in science, in busi- students at the University of Michigan. ness, and in the home. New microprocessors continue to be incorporated into various products at an More visible and no less important are The computer chip was invented in increasing rate; development cycles are the ways microprocessors are changing 1958 when Jack Kilby figured out how down to months rather than years as the the way we communicate with each other to fabricate several transistors on a sin- current generation of processors are and even the kinds of tasks we do. In- gle-crystal silicon substrate and thereby used to aid in the design and manufac- dustries such as desktop publishing, created the integrated circuit. Since ture of the next generation. Because of electronic mail, multimedia systems, then more and more transistors have their economies of scale, off-the-shelf and financial accounting systems have been integrated on a single chip. By microprocessors are expanding the use been created by the ubiquitous micro- the early 1980s the technology of of micro- and medium-scale computing processor. It is nothing short of the en- VLSI, or very-large scale integration in business and in the home. They are gine of the digital revolution. (hundreds of thousands of transistors on also motivating changes in the design History of Computers at Los Alamos 1943–45 1952 1955 1956 1961 1971 Desktop calculators MANIAC is built at The MANIAC II pro- MANIAC II is com- STRETCH is com- The Laboratory buys and punched-card the Laboratory under ject, a computer fea- pleted. The Labora- pleted and is about its first CDC 7600, accounting machines the direction of Nick turing floating-point tory installs serial thirty-five times as the successor to the are used as calculat- Metropolis. It is the arithmetic, is started. number 1 of the the powerful as the IBM 6600. These ma- ing tools in the Man- first computer de- The Laboratory be- IBM 704, which has 704. IBM used chines are the main hattan Project. signed from the start gins working closely about the same much of the technol- supercomputers in according to John with computer manu- power as MANIAC ogy developed for use at the Laborato- 1945 von Neumann’s facturers to ensure II. From this point STRETCH in its ry during much of ENIAC, the world’s stored-program that its future com- on, the Laboratory computers for years the 1970s. first large-scale elec- ideas. puting needs will be acquires supercom- afterward. tronic computer, is satisfied. puters from industry. 1972 completed at the 1953 1966 Cray Research, Inc University of Penn- The Laboratory gets Late 1950s The first on-line is founded. The sylvania. Its “shake- serial number 2 of The Laboratory and mass-storage system Laboratory consults down” calculation is the IBM 701. This IBM enter into a joint with a capacity of on the design of the the “Los Alamos “Defense Calculator” project to build over 1012 bits, the Cray-1. problem,” a calcula- is approximately STRETCH, a com- IBM 1360 Photo tion needed for the equal in power to puter based on tran- Store, is installed at 1975 design of thermonu- the MANIAC. sistors rather than the Laboratory. Con- Laboratory scientists clear weapons. MANIAC II vacuum tubes, to trol Data Corporation design and build meet the needs of introduces the first a high-speed net- 1949 the nuclear-weapons “pipelined” computer, work that uses 50- IBM’s first Card Pro- program. the CDC 6600, de- megabit-per-second grammable Calcula- signed by Seymour channels. tors are installed at Cray. The Laborato- the Laboratory. ry buys a few. 2 Los Alamos Science Number 22 1994 Windows on Computing of large-scale scientific computers. The dressing the “Grand Challenge” compu- plans to continue working with the su- focus has shifted from single, very fast tational problems in science and engi- percomputing industry and to help ex- processors to very fast networks that neering, Los Alamos set up the Ad- pand the contributions of computer allow hundreds to thousands of micro- vanced Computing Laboratory as a kind modeling and simulation to all areas of processors to cooperate on a single of proving ground for testing MPPs on society. Here, we will briefly review a problem. Large-scale computation is a real problems. Ironically, just as their few of our past contributions to the critical technology in scientific re- enormous potential is being clearly high end of computing, outline some search, in major industries, and in the demonstrated at Los Alamos and else- new initiatives in large-scale parallel maintenance of national security. It is where, economic forces stemming from computing, and then introduce a rela- also the area of computing in which reduced federal budgets and slow ac- tively new area of involvement, our Los Alamos has played a major role. ceptance into the commercial market- support of the information revolution The microprocessor has opened up place are threatening the viability of the and the National Information Infrastruc- the possibility of continual increases in supercomputing industry. ture initiative. the power of supercomputers through As a leader in scientific computing, Since the days of the Manhattan Pro- the architecture of the MPP, the mas- Los Alamos National Laboratory has ject, Los Alamos has been a driver of sively parallel processor that can con- always understood the importance of and a major participant in the develop- sist of thousands of off-the-shelf micro- supercomputing for maintaining nation- ment of large-scale scientific computa- processors. In 1989, seeing the al security and economic strength. At tion. It was here that Nick Metropolis potential of that new technology for ad- this critical juncture the Laboratory directed the construction of MANIAC I 1976 1980 1985 1988 1990 1994 Serial number 1 of The Laboratory be- The Ultra-High- The Laboratory A test device for A massively parallel the Cray-1 is deliv- gins its parallel- Speed Graphics obtains the first of its HIPPI ports is trans- Cray T3D is installed ered to the Labora- processing efforts. Project is started. It six Cray Y-MP com- ferred to industry. at the ACL for use in tory. pioneers animation puters. It also in- The Laboratory, the collaborations with 1981 as a visualization stalls, studies, and Jet Propulsion Labo- industry. 1977 An early parallel tool and requires evaluates a number ratory, and the San A Common File Sys- processor (PuPS) is gigabit-per-second of massively parallel Diego Supercomput- tem, composed of fabricated at the communication ca- computers. The Ad- er start the Casa IBM mass-storage Laboratory but never pacity. A massively vanced Computing Gigabit Test Project components, is in- completed. parallel (128-node) Laboratory (ACL) is stalled and provides Intel computer is established. 1991 storage for all cen- 1983 installed. The Laboratory tral and remote Lab- Denelcor’s HEP, an 1989 transfers to industry oratory computer early commercially 1987 The ACL purchases the HIPPI frame- systems. available parallel The need for higher the CM-2 Connec- buffer, an important processor, in in- communication tion Machine from component for visu- The Cray T3D stalled, as is the first capacity is answered Thinking Machines. alization of complex of five Cray X-MP by the development It has 65,536 parallel images. computers. of the High-Perfor- processors. mance Parallel Inter- 1992 face (HIPPI), an A 1024-processor 800-megabit/second Thinking Machines channel, which be- CM-5, the most pow- comes an ANSI erful computer at the The Cray-1 standard. time, is installed at the ACL. 3 Windows on Computing intro1.adb 7/26/94 and II. Maniac I (1952) was among the first general-purpose digital computers to realize von Neumann’s concept of a 1011 stored-program computer—one that Cray T3D, CM-5 could go from step to step in a compu- tation by using a set of instructions that was stored electronically in its own Intel Delta, CM-200, etc. memory in the same way that data are stored.