Each node has an SMP configuration and is packaged in one or more frames. A node can have two, four, eight or 16 Power3 processors at 375 MHz. Wide nodes have additional expansion slots compared to thin nodes. High nodes have larger cache, increased memory bandwidth and additional slots compared to wide nodes. The frames are either short or tall.
Short frames can have a mix of thin or wide nodes while tall frames can also accomodate high nodes.
Alternatively, a tall frame may have up to 8 wide nodes or 4 high nodes. These nodes communicate with each other by sending and receiving packets through the SP Switch. Depending on the size and resolution of the domain over which forecasts are being produced and the configuration of the SP, the continual generation of new 24-hour forecasts on an update cycle every few hours can easily be supported. More information about the IBM SP server portion of this work, as implemented for the 1996 Olympics is available for you to read. The level of performance achieved by such a system can now be met by a much smaller configuration at significantly lower cost using more modern hardware technology.