Overview of the Blue Gene/L system architecture

The Blue Gene®/L computer is a massively parallel supercomputer based on IBM system-on-a-chip technology. It is designed to scale to 65,536 dual-processor nodes, with a peak performance of 360 teraflops. This paper describes the project objectives and provides an overview of the system architecture that resulted. We discuss our application-based approach and rationale for a low-power, highly integrated design. The key architectural features of Blue Gene/L are introduced in this paper: the link chip component and five Blue Gene/L networks, the PowerPC® 440 core and floating-point enhancements, the on-chip and off-chip distributed memory system, the node- and system-level design for high reliability, and the comprehensive approach to fault isolation.