That data transfer speed is critical to computers that use so many processors, on which calculations are often not constrained by processor speed but by one processor waiting for information from another. To house the ASCI White, a new building with a room the size of two basketball courts has been built at the Livermore lab. That room should start filling up with ASCI White in June of 2000, said Gilbert Weigand, DOE's deputy assistant secretary in charge of research, development, and simulation. That's about three months after the March 2000 date that IBM researchers plan to test the ASCI White computer at an IBM facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, before shipping it to California, he said. Although it's difficult to get software to run on a computer with thousands of processors, lab personnel are working on ways to automate the process, said Chuck Athey, leader for the system administrator group at the lab.
Storage also is a challenge.
Each group of four processors in Blue Pacific has its own hard disk. Those disks, in turn, are connected by a separate IBM computer called Raven to tape storage libraries called Condor and Vulcan that together can store 62 trillion bytes of data, said Kim Cupps, who controls the storage. That stewardship program also includes high-energy physics experiments as well as careful scrutiny of actual weapons pulled out of the stockpile. Like the labs themselves, the computers' core mission centers on nuclear weapons research, although the systems will handle a multitude of nonmilitary projects as well. Locating previously undiscovered genes, modeling supernovas, and designing more aerodynamic trucks are some of these functions, researchers said.