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HECToR
General Info
Sponsors	EPSRC, NERC, BBSRC
Designers	Cray
Operators	EPCC
Introduction	October 2007
Retired	March 24 2014
Peak FLOPS	829 teraFLOPS
Price	$85,000,000
Succession
ARCHER

HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale Resource) was terascale x86 supercomputer serving as the UK's primary academic research supercomputer. HECToR has been superseded by ARCHER.

Overview

HECToR was a UK academic national supercomputer service funded by NERC, EPSRC, and BBSRC for the academic community. HECTor was deployed in a number of phases with each phase upgrading it to over double the performance.

Phases

HECToR underwent 5 major upgrades.

Cores	Peak Compute
11,328	63.44 teraFLOPS
12,288	113.05 teraFLOPS
22,656	208.44 teraFLOPS
44,544	366.74 teraFLOPS
90,112	829.01 teraFLOPS

Phase 1

Phase 1 was the initial system was based on the Cray XT4 (Rainier) system. The system comprised of 1416 compute blades across 60 cabinets. There are four sockets per blade. The processors are dual-core AMD Opteron operating at 2.8 GHz. There is 6 GB of memory per socket for a total system memory of 33.2 TiB. Rainier had a peak compute performance of 63.44 teraFLOPS.

Type	Count
Nodes	1,416
CPUs	5,664
Cores	11,328

In addition to the computational nodes, there were 24 additional service blades with dual-socket dual-core processors that were used for facilitating the supercomputer services such as login, control, and network management.

The system relies on Cray SeaStar2 interconnect. There's one SeaStar2 chip for every two node which comes with 6 network links. The network implements a 3D-torus. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is was 2.17 GB/s, with a minimum bi-section bandwidth of 4.1 TB/s, and with a node-to-node latency of around 6 μs.

The memory subsystem:

Type	Capacity
Direct attached storage	576 TiB
NAS storage	40 TiB
MAID storage	56 TiB
Tape drives	3 TiB

Phase 1b

The system was upgraded in August 2008 with a small vector system. 28 Cray X2 (Black Widow) vector compute nodes were added. Each node had 4 Cray vector processor. There are 32 GiB of memory for node for a total of 896 GiB of memory.

Type	Count
Nodes	28
CPUs	112

With each vector processor capable of 25.6 gigaFLOPS, the new addition adds 2.87 teraFLOPS of compute to the existing system. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is was 16 GB/s, with a minimum bi-section bandwidth of 254 GB/s, and with a node-to-node latency of around 4.6 μs.

The memory has also been upgraded.

Type	Capacity
Direct attached storage	934 TiB
NAS storage	70 TiB
MAID storage	112 TiB
Tape drives	6 TiB

Phase 2

Phase 2a

Phase 2a

Phase 2a

HECToR phase two is a Cray XT4 system with a vector X2 system. The system comprises 1416 compute blades across 60 cabinets. Each blade incorporates four compute nodes. Within a compute node are quad-core AMD Opteron CPUs operating at 2.3 GHz along with 8 GB of memory for a total system memory of 44.25 TiB.

Type	Count
Nodes	1,416
CPUs	5,664
Cores	22,656

With a total of 22,656 cores, the system has a peak compute performance of 208.4 teraFLOPS. In addition to the computational nodes, there are 24 additional blades with two dual-core processors per node which is used for various services such as login, control, and network management.

The system relies on Cray SeaStar2 interconnect. There's one SeaStar2 chip for every four nodes which comes with 6 network links. The network implements a 3D-torus. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is was 2.17 GB/s, with a minimum bi-section bandwidth of 4.1 TB/s, and with a node-to-node latency of around 6 μs.

This system had an Cray X2 vector compute cluster with 28 nodes. There were 4 vector processors per node for a total of 112 processors. With each vector processor capable of 25.6 gigaFLOPS, the new addition adds 2.87 teraFLOPS of compute to the existing system. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is was 16 GB/s, with a minimum bi-section bandwidth of 254 GB/s, and with a node-to-node latency of around 4.6 μs.

Storage systems

• high-performance RAID: 934 TiB
• NAS (Network Attached Storage): 70 TiB
• MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks): 112 TiB

Phase 2b

Phase 2b upgraded the system to a Cray XE6 comprising 464 blades across 20 cabinets. There are four nodes per blade. Each node is a dual-socket 12-core AMD Opteron Magny Cours CPUs operating at 2.1 GHz.

Type	Count
Nodes	464
CPUs	3,712
Cores	44,544

There are 16 GiB of memory per socket for a total system memory of 58 TiB. With 44,544 cores, the system had a peak compute performance of 374.2 teraFLOPS. In addition to the computational nodes, there are 16 additional blades with two dual-core processors per node which is used for various services such as login, control, and network management.

The system relies on Cray Gemini interconnect. There's one Gemini chip for every two nodes which comes with 10 network links. The network implements a 3D-torus. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is >= 5 GB/s with a node-to-node latency of around 1-1.5μs.

Storage:

• high-performance RAID disks: 596 TiB
• NAS (Network Attached Storage): 70 TiB
• MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks): 168 TiB

Phase 3

Phase 3

HECToR Phase 3 is a Cray XE6 supercomputer. The system comprises 704 compute blades across 30 cabinets. Each blade incorporates four compute nodes. Within a compute node are two 16-core AMD Opteron 2.3GHz Interlagos-based processors.

Type	Count
Nodes	2,816
CPUs	5,632
Cores	90,112

There are 16 GiB of memory per socket for a total system memory of 88 TiB. With 90,112 cores, the system had a peak compute performance of 829 teraFLOPS. In addition to the computational nodes, there are 16 additional blades with two dual-core processors per node which is used for various services such as login, control, and network management.

The system relies on Cray Gemini interconnect. There's one Gemini chip for every two node which comes with 10 network links. The network implements a 3D-torus. The MPI point-to-point bandwidth is >= 5 GB/s with a node-to-node latency of around 1-1.5μs.

• high-performance RAID disks: >1 PiB
• Network Attached Storage: 70 TiB
• MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks): 168 TiB

TOP500

List	Phase	Rank	Rmax	Rpeak
11/2007	Phase 1	17	54.6	63.4
06/2008		30
11/2008		47
06/2009		68
11/2010	Phase 2a	78	95.1	113.0
06/2011		94
11/2009	Phase 2b	20	174.1	208.4
06/2010		26
06/2010	Phase 2b	16	274.7	366.7
11/2010		25
06/2011	Phase 3	24	660.2	829.0
11/2011		19
06/2012		32
11/2012		35
06/2013		41
11/2013		50
06/2014		59
11/2014		79
06/2015		105