Cobalt (supercomputer)

Cobalt (supercomputer). Cobalt was a Cray XT3 supercomputer installed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. As part of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, it provided computational resources for the United States Department of Energy's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program. The system was dedicated to supporting large-scale, unclassified scientific research in fields such as physics, chemistry, and materials science.

Overview

Cobalt was a mid-2000s high-performance computing system that represented a significant investment by the United States Department of Energy in advancing computational science. It was housed within the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a key facility managed by the Argonne National Laboratory for the Office of Science. The supercomputer's primary mission was to serve the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, allocating time through a competitive peer-review process to researchers from academia, industry, and other national laboratories. Its deployment underscored a national commitment to maintaining United States leadership in supercomputing for open scientific discovery.

Hardware and architecture

The Cobalt system was based on the Cray XT3 architecture, a massively parallel processing design pioneered by Cray Inc.. Its compute nodes were powered by single-core AMD Opteron processors, interconnected via Cray's proprietary SeaStar interconnect in a three-dimensional torus topology. This architecture facilitated high-bandwidth, low-latency communication crucial for scaling scientific applications. The machine featured a peak theoretical performance of 5.7 teraflops and utilized the UNICOS operating system, Cray's variant of UNIX. Its installation required specialized power and cooling infrastructure within the Argonne National Laboratory data center.

Software and applications

Cobalt ran a software stack centered on UNICOS and supported major compiler suites like Portland Group and GNU Compiler Collection. Key scientific libraries included MPICH and Cray's own optimized Message Passing Interface implementation for parallel programming. Researchers used the system for demanding simulations in computational fluid dynamics, quantum chemistry codes like NWChem, astrophysics modeling, and molecular dynamics studies. The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provided user support and training, helping scientists port and optimize codes from other systems like the IBM Blue Gene to exploit the Cray XT3 architecture efficiently.

History and development

The Cobalt system was commissioned in 2005 following a procurement and installation process led by the Argonne National Laboratory. Its acquisition was part of a broader strategy by the United States Department of Energy to refresh capability computing resources at its national laboratories. The Cray XT3 platform was selected in a competitive bid, marking a continued partnership between Argonne National Laboratory and Cray Inc. that included earlier systems like the Cray T3E. Cobalt entered production service in early 2006, operating for approximately four years before being decommissioned in 2010. Its retirement coincided with the deployment of more powerful successors like the IBM Blue Gene/P system named Intrepid.

Operational context and usage

Within the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, Cobalt operated as a dedicated resource for the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, which awarded time based on proposals reviewed by panels like the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee. It supported pioneering research, including studies for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, combustion modeling for the General Electric company, and climate research for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The system's management involved close collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory staff, Cray Inc. support engineers, and the user community to ensure high availability and performance for projects funded by the Office of Science and other agencies.

Category:Supercomputers Category:Cray supercomputers Category:Argonne National Laboratory Category:2005 establishments in Illinois