#CHIPS: "Sandia National Labs Favors Intel's Xeon Phi MIC"

To break through the petascale barrier to exascale supercomputing, Sandia National Labs is building six different testbeds using rival multi-core microprocessors. These massive parallel processors are currently favoring Intel Xeon's--used in four of the six systems--with the new 50+ core Xeon Phi and its many-integrated cores (MICs) in an Appro chassis--called 'Arthur'--leading the pack: R. Colin Johnson


Sandia National Laboratories "Arthur" MIC testbed is based on Appro's Xtreme-X Supercomputer Cluster (pictured).

Here is what Go-Parallel says about Sandia's work on Intel MIC: As a part of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program, a testbed prototype called “Arthur” at Sandia National Labs is helping to pioneer the future of many-integrated core (MIC) supercomputers.

Sandia National Labs aims to reach the goal of exascale supercomputers one thousand times more powerful than the petascale supercomputers used today. Its strategy is to co-design future supercomputers with experimental testbeds, architectural simulators and proxy applications that together accurately predict the performance future supercomputers...
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