The Hitachi BladeSymphony

Machine type	RISC-based distributed-memory multi-processor.
Models	BladeSymphony.
Operating system	Linux (RedHat EL4), MS Windows.
Connection structure	Fully connected SMP nodes (see remarks).
Compilers	Fortran 77, Fortran 95, Parallel Fortran, C, C++.
Vendors information web page:	http://www.hitachi.co.jp/products/bladesymphony_global/products03.html
Year of introduction	2005.

System parameters:

Model	BladeSymphony
Clock cycle	1.66 GHz
Theor. peak performance
Per proc. core (64-bits)	6.64 Gflop/s
Maximal (frame of 64 proc.s)	850 Gflop/s
Main memory
Memory/maximal	≤ 128 GB
No. of processors	4—64
Communication bandwidth
Point-to-point	---

Remarks:

The Hitachi BladeSymphony is one of the many Itanium based parallel servers that are currently on the market. Still there are some differences with most other machines. First, a BladeSymphony frame can contain up to 4 modules which contain a maximum of 8 two-processor blades. The 16 processors in a module constitute an SMP node, like the nodes of the IBM eServer p-series. Four of such modules are housed in a frame and can communicate via a 4×4 crossbar. Unfortunately Hitachi nowhere mentions bandwidth data for the communication between modules nor within a module. Hitachi offers the blades with processors of various speeds. The fastest of these runs at 1.66 GHz from which it can be derived that the dual-core Montecito processor is used. This makes the Theoretical Peak speed for a 64-processor frame 850 Gflop/s.

Hitachi makes no mention of a connecting technology to cluster frames into larger systems but this can obviously been done with third party networks like Infiniband, Quadrics, etc. In all, there is the impression that Hitachi is hardly interested in marketing the system in the HPC area but rather for the high-end commercial server market.

Like the other Japanese vendors Hitachi(see the Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST and the NEC Express) very much stresses the RAS features of the system. About all failing components may be replaced while the system is in operation which makes it very resilient against system-wide crashes.

Note: Large HPC configurations of the BladeSymphony are not sold in Europe as they are judged to be of insufficient economical interest by Hitachi.

Measured Performances:
The BladeSymphony was introduced in November 2005 and as yet no independent performance figures are available.