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HPC MSU






The MSU EMPIRE Supercluster Fun Facts

Memory Facts

EMPIRE currently has 607.5 Gigabytes of memory (230 x 607.5, or 652,298,158,080 bytes)

  • It can remember the equivalent almost 124 million typed pages.
  • If these pages were stacked, the stack would be almost 7.8 miles high.
  • If the pages were laid end-to-end, they would stretch for almost 21,500 miles, or nearly the circumference of the earth at the equator.

Disk Storage Facts

EMPIRE currently has about 9.7 Terabytes of disk space (1012 x 9.7, or 9,700,000,000,000 bytes).

  • It can store the equivalent of almost 1.8 billion typed pages.
  • If these pages were stacked, the stack would be almost 116 miles high.
  • If the pages were laid end-to-end, they would stretch for almost 319,000 miles, which is long enough to circle the earth at the equator 13 times.
  • It would take almost 15,000 CD-ROMs to store this much data.
  • It would take almost 6,750,000 floppy disks to store this much data.

Performance Facts

EMPIRE currently has a theoretical peak performance of about 1.158 Teraflops (1,157,832,000,000 floating point operations per second).

  • According to the Top500 Supercomputer Sites list published in June 2002, EMPIRE was the 126th most powerful computer in the world, and the 10th most powerful academic system in the U.S.
  • If you are really quick with a pencil and could perform one floating point calculation per second, it would take you about 36,700 years to calculate by hand what EMPIRE can calculate in one second.
  • If all 250 million Americans were each performing one floating point calculation per second simultaneously, it would take them 1 hour and 17 minutes to complete what EMPIRE could do in one second.

Physical Facts

EMPIRE currently resides in 16 equipment racks with 32 systems in each rack.

  • It requires 25 tons of air conditioning, enough to cool six average sized (2000 sq ft) houses.
  • It requires approximately 70 kVA of electricity.
  • Although each system was shipped to us assembled, more than 9,800 screws were required to install the systems and switches in the racks.
  • It weighs approximately 8 tons (16,000 pounds)
  • It requires 96 square feet of floor space, and yields a theoretical peak performance of 12.06 Gigaflops per square foot.
  • There is approximately 2560 feet of Category 5 twisted pair cables (nearly 1/2 mile), and over 750 feet of fiber optic cables used to connect the nodes.