NEC SX describes a series ofvectorsupercomputers designed, manufactured, and marketed byNEC. This computer series is notable for providing the first computer to exceed 1 gigaflop,[1][2] as well as the fastest supercomputer in the world between 1992–1993, and 2002–2004.[3] The current model, as of 2018, is theSX-Aurora TSUBASA.
The first models, the SX-1 and SX-2, were announced in April 1983, and released in 1985.[2][4][5][6] The SX-2 was the first computer to exceed 1gigaflop.[1][2] The SX-1 and SX-1E were less powerful models offered by NEC.
The SX-3 was announced in 1989,[7][8] and shipped in 1990.[6] The SX-3 allows parallel computing using bothSIMD andMIMD.[9] It also switched from theACOS-4 based SX-OS, to theAT&T System V UNIX-basedSUPER-UX operating system.[6] In 1992 an improved variant, the SX-3R, was announced.[6] A SX-3/44 variant was the fastest computer in the world between 1992-1993 on theTOP500 list. It had LSI integrated circuits with 20,000 gates per IC with a per-gate delay time of 70 picoseconds, could house 4 arithmetic processors with up to 4 sharing the same main memory, and up to several processors to achieve up to 22 GFLOPS of performance, with 1.37 GFLOPS of performance with a single processor. 100 LSI ICs were housed in a single multi chip module to achieve 2 million gates per module. The modules were watercooled.[10]
The SX-4 series was announced in 1994, and first shipped in 1995.[6] Since the SX-4, SX series supercomputers are constructed in a doubly parallel manner.[citation needed] A number ofcentral processing units (CPUs) are arranged into aparallelvector processing node.[citation needed] These nodes are then installed in a regularSMP arrangement.[citation needed]
The SX-5 was announced and shipped in 1998,[6] with the SX-6 following in 2001, and the SX-7 in 2002.[11] Starting in 2001,Cray marketed the SX-5 and SX-6 exclusively in the US, and non-exclusively elsewhere for a short time.[citation needed]
TheEarth Simulator, built fromSX-6 nodes, was the fastest supercomputer from June 2002 to June 2004 on theLINPACK benchmark, achieving 35.86TFLOPS.[3][12][13][14] The SX-9 was introduced in 2007 and discontinued in 2015.[15]
Tadashi Watanabe has been NEC's lead designer for the majority of SX supercomputer systems.[16] For this work he received theEckert–Mauchly Award in 1998 and theSeymour Cray Computer Engineering Award in 2006.[citation needed]
Each system has multiple models, and the following table lists the most powerful variant of each system. Further certain systems have revisions, identified by a letter suffix.
| System | Introduction | Max. CPUs | Peak CPU double precisionGFLOPS | Peak system GFLOPS | Max. main memory | System memory B/W (GB/s) | Memory B/W per CPU (GB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SX-1E[5][6][11] | 1983 | 1 | 0.325[17] | 128MB | |||
| SX-1[5][11] | 1983[6][11] | 1 | 0.570[6] / 0.650[17] | 256 MB | |||
| SX-2[5][11] | 1983[6][11] | 1 | 1.3[6] | 1.3[11] | 256 MB[6] | 11 | 11 |
| SX-3[7][8] | 1990[11] | 4[7][6] | 5.5[8][11] | 22[7][11] | 2GB[7] | 44 | 22 |
| SX-3R[citation needed] | 1992 | ||||||
| SX-4[11] | 1994[18][11] | 32 | 2 | 64 | 16 GB | 512 | 16 |
| SX-5[11] | 1998[11] | 16 | 8[11] | 128 | 128 GB | 1024 | 64 |
| SX-6[11] | 2001[11] | 8 | 8[11] | 64 | 64 GB | 256 | 32 |
| SX-6i[citation needed] | 2001[11] | 1 | 8 GB | ||||
| SX-7[11] | 2002[11] | 32 | 8.83 | 282 | 256 GB | 1129 | 35.3 |
| SX-8[16][11] | 2004[16][11] | 8 | 16[11] | 128 | 128 GB | 512 | 64 |
| SX-8i[citation needed] | 2005 | 32 GB | |||||
| SX-8R[citation needed] | 2006 | 8 | 35.2 | 281.6 | 256 GB | 563.2 | 70.4 |
| SX-9[11] | 2007 | 16 | 102.4[11] | 1638 | 1 TB | 4096 | 256 |
| SX-ACE[citation needed] | 2013 | 1 | 256 | 256 | 1 TB | 256 | 256 |
| SX-Aurora TSUBASA[citation needed] | 2017 | 8 | 2450 | 19600 | 8×48GB | 8×1200 | 1200 |
| SX-Aurora TSUBASA Type 20[citation needed] | 2021 | 8 | 3070 | 24560 | 8×48GB | 8×1530 | 1530 |
| SX-4 | SX-4A | SX-5 | SX-6 | SX-8 | SX-8R | SX-9 | SX-ACE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max. nodes | 16 | 16 | 32 | 128 | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 |
| Max. CPUs | 512 | 256 | 512 | 1,024 | 4,096 | 4,096 | 8,192 | 512 |
| Peak TFLOPS | 1 | 0.5 | 4 | 8 | 65 | 140.8 | 839 | 131 |
| Max. main memory | 256 GB | 512 GB | 4 TB | 8 TB | 64 TB | 128 TB | 512 TB | 32 TB |
| Total memory B/W (TB/s) | 8 | 4 | 32 | 32 | 131 | 281.6 | 2,048 | 131 |
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The SX-1 and SX-2 ran theACOS-4 based SX-OS. The SX-3 onwards run theSUPER-UXoperating system (OS); the Earth Simulator runs a custom version of this OS.
SUPER-UX comes withFortran andC++compilers. Cray has also developed anAda compiler which is available as an option.
Somevertical applications are available through NEC, but in general customers are expected to develop much of their own software. In addition to commercial applications, there is a wide body offree software for the UNIX environment which can be compiled and run on SUPER-UX, such asEmacs, andVim. A port ofGCC is also available for the platform.
The SX-Aurora TSUBASA PCIe card is running in aLinux machine, the Vector Host (VH), which provides operating system services to the Vector Engine (VE).[19] The VE operating system VEOS runs in user space on the VH. Applications compiled for the VE can use almost all Linux system calls, they are transparently forwarded and executed on the VH. The components of VEOS are licensed under theGNU General Public License.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)| Records | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Fujitsu VP2600/10 4.0 gigaflops | World's most powerful supercomputer (NEC SX-3/44) 1992 | Succeeded by Thinking Machines CM-5/1024 59.7 gigaflops |
