Timelapse video of Sandia’s Sun Constellation build Comments Off on Timelapse video of Sandia’s Sun Constellation build

Sandia’s Sun Constellation system, Red Sky, has been placed at number 10 on the latest Top 500 supercomputer list. It’s a monster cluster system – 70TB of memory, 47,232 cores, and built up of Sun x6275 blade systems hooked up in a 3D torus with Infiniband interconnects.

Marc Hamilton has posted up a timelapse video on his blog over at Sun showing the system being installed.

Red Sky has replaced Sandia’s existing Thunderbird system, and is actually built in the same place as ASCI Red used to live. The x6275 blades use Intel Nehalem EP processors running at 2.96Ghz, with no local disk fitted to the blades, allowing a much greater density.

Red Sky also features Sun’s new Cooling Door System which pumps cooled water through the cabinet doors. Sandia’s calculations reckon that this will save over 5 million gallons of water a year, compared to traditional air-cooled systems.