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| NEC SX-9 | |
|---|---|
| Name | NEC SX-9 |
| Developer | NEC |
| Family | SX |
| Release | 2007 |
| Cpu | vector processors |
| Memory | up to several terabytes |
| Os | SUPER-UX |
| Purpose | supercomputing |
NEC SX-9 The NEC SX-9 is a vector supercomputer developed by NEC Corporation introduced in 2007 as part of the SX series. It targeted high-performance computing markets such as climate modeling, computational fluid dynamics, and seismic modeling, and competed with systems from vendors like Cray, IBM, and Fujitsu. The architecture emphasized wide vector pipelines, high memory bandwidth, and scalable interconnects for tightly coupled parallel workloads.
The SX-9 continued NEC's lineage from earlier SX systems and was positioned for scientific institutions, national laboratories, and research universities including organizations such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. As with predecessors used at facilities like Riken and Argonne National Laboratory, the SX-9 aimed to accelerate codes in domains encountered at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and industrial groups at Siemens and Shell. Key partners and customers often integrated SX-9 installations alongside clusters from HP, Dell, and systems from Cray Inc. and IBM Research.
The SX-9 featured vector processors with long vector registers, multiple scalar cores for system tasks, and a high-bandwidth memory subsystem akin to designs seen in architectures from Fujitsu and research at University of Tokyo. The machine used a bespoke interconnect topology influenced by earlier NEC designs and concepts from network research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich. Its node architecture emphasized sustained memory throughput for codes developed at institutions like MIT Lincoln Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and Max Planck Society. Cooling and cabinet layout drew on data center practices by firms such as Schneider Electric and facilities run by CERN and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
NEC positioned the SX-9 for strong performance on vectorized benchmarks comparable to LINPACK-style tests used by projects like the TOP500 and evaluation efforts at National Institute of Standards and Technology. Reported sustained performance for scientific kernels paralleled results from machines at Fujitsu Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and benchmark studies published by researchers at University of Cambridge and Stanford University. Real-world application benchmarks from atmospheric modeling groups at Met Office and oceanography groups at Scripps Institution of Oceanography demonstrated advantages on stencil codes and sparse linear algebra used in collaborations with IBM Watson Research Center and Sandia National Laboratories.
The SX-9 ran NEC's UNIX-like SUPER-UX operating system, aligning with software ecosystems familiar to users at National Center for Atmospheric Research and developers from University of California, Berkeley. The software stack supported MPI implementations similar to Open MPI and proprietary variants used across centers like Argonne National Laboratory and NERSC. Scientific libraries and tools from projects such as BLAS, LAPACK, and vendor-tuned math libraries were commonly ported by groups at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Developers targeted the SX-9 with compilers and tooling optimized for vectorization, analogous to tools from Intel Corporation and research compilers from University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. NEC provided Fortran and C++ compilers, performance profilers, and debuggers used by teams at Princeton University, Yale University, and industrial R&D centers like General Electric and Boeing. Parallelization employed MPI and OpenMP models familiar to programmers at Cornell University and Imperial College London, while application ports often involved collaborations with vendor support groups and academic centers such as Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science.
SX-9 systems were deployed for large-scale simulations in climate science at institutions like ECMWF and Met Office, in aerodynamics at laboratories including NASA Ames Research Center, and in seismic imaging for companies such as Schlumberger and Halliburton. Use cases also encompassed astrophysics simulations by researchers at Princeton University Observatory and molecular dynamics work by groups at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Production runs integrated workflow frameworks and visualization tools similar to those from ParaView and collaborations with centers such as EuroHPC and national supercomputing centers.
The SX-9 arrived during an era of transition in high-performance computing when vector supercomputers competed with emerging massively parallel scalar clusters from vendors like IBM and Cray Research. Its influence persisted in subsequent NEC designs and informed interconnect and memory strategies observed in systems developed at Fujitsu and in research projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Alumni from SX-9 projects contributed to later initiatives associated with TOP500 rankings, national procurement programs at Jülich Research Centre, and the evolution of accelerated architectures investigated at Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Category:NEC supercomputers