Supercomputer Component, Roadrunner TriBlade
date: label: date made
content: ca 2008
name: label: maker
content: IBM
notes: label: Description
content: This computer component consists of four computer boards. Instructions on how to remove individual boards of the triblade are on the top of the component A black grille protecting the memory boards can be removed for access to them.
label: Description
content: The TriBlade was a part of a supercomputer named Roadrunner built by IBM. Roadrunner operated at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2008 to 2013. The computer was the first to achieve a 1.0 petaflops (Floating-point Operations Per Second) on May 25, 2008. One petaflop/s is 1,000 trillion floating point operations per second. Roadrunner was the fastest computer in the world for about 1.5 years in 2008 and 2009. The top performance this computer generated was 1.456 petaflops.
label: Description
content: The system was funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Roadrunner was also the first supercomputer to use a hybrid processor architecture, which is based on both Opteron X64 processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the IBM Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) processing elements.
label: Description
content: A TriBlade is a cluster of four computer boards. A TriBlade contains two dual-core AMD Opteron 2210 with 16 GB RAM and four IBM PowerXCell 8i. There are four slots for blades: two QS22 Cell blades which are at the top and houses four IBM PowerXCell 8i, one LS21 Opteron blade which is located third from the top and houses the two dual-core AMD Opteron 2210, and an expansion blade at the bottom which connect the two QS22 via four PCIe x8 links to the LS21, two links for each QS22. The expansion blade also provides outside connectivity via an Infiniband 4x DDR adapter. Three TriBlades fit into one BladeCenter H chassis which is placed in a Connected Unit of 60 BladeCenter H.
label: Description
content: Roadrunner was decommissioned on March 31, 2013. The precise work done by this computer was not described by the donor.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
label: See more items in
content: Computers & Business Machines
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from Los Alamos National Laboratory
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2014.0239.01
label: catalog number
content: 2014.0239.01
label: accession number
content: 2014.0239
objectType: label: Object Name
content: supercomputer component
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: silicon (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 5/8 in x 10 1/8 in x 18 in; 11.7475 cm x 25.7175 cm x 45.72 cm