RIKEN Super Combined Cluster (RSCC) System

Recently, Linux cluster systems have been replacing conventional vector processors in the area of high-performance computing. A typical Linux cluster system consists of high-performance commodity CPUs such as the Intel Xeon processor and commodity networks such as Gigabit Ethernet and Myrinet. Therefore, Linux cluster systems can directly benefit from the drastic performance improvement of these commodity components. It seems easy to build a large-scale Linux cluster by connecting these components, and the theoretical peak performance may be high. However, gaining stable operation and the expected performance from a large-scale cluster needs dedicated technologies from the hardware level to the software level. In February 2004, Fujitsu shipped one of the world's largest clusters to a customer. This system is currently the fastest Linux cluster in Japan and the seventh fastest supercomputer in the world. In this paper, we describe the technologies for realizing such a high-performance cluster system and then describe the implementation of an example large-scale cluster and its performance.