A TeraFLOP supercomputer in 1996: the ASCI TFLOP system

To maintain the integrity of the US nuclear stockpile without detonating nuclear weapons, the DOE needs the results of computer-simulations that overwhelm the world's most powerful supercomputers. Responding to this need, the US Department of Energy (DOE) initiated the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). This program accelerates the development of new scalable supercomputers resulting in a TeraFLOP computer before the end of 1996. In September 1995, DOE announced that it would work with Intel Corporation to build the ASCI TFLOP supercomputer. This system would use commodity commercial off-the-shelf (CCOTS) components to keep the price under control and would contain over 9000 Intel Pentium Pro processors. In this paper, we describe the hardware and software design of this supercomputer.