Development of a Special Purpose Parallel Computer, Embedded High Performance Computer (EHPC) for the First Principles DVXa Calculations

Tohru SASAKIa and Umpei NAGASHIMAb*

aA-Priori Microsystems, Inc.
14-605, Keio Leading-edge Laboratory of Science and Technology, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan
bGrid Technology Research Center, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
*e-mail: u.nagashima@aist.go.jp

(Received: July 7, 2003; Accepted for publication: September 26, 2003; Published on Web: October 7, 2003)

We developed a special purpose parallel computer: Embedded High Performance Computer (EHPC) for the first principle DVXa calculations, which realizes super high performance and cost-down for large scale first principle material simulation.
An EHPC unit consists of one host-board (Pentium III 400MHz) and 7 acceleration-boards. Four general purpose processors (SH4 200MHz) are equipped on a board. The EHPC unit has 28 processors connected to each other by Compact PCI-bus.
The step of matrix elements generation where more than 90% computation time is required was efficiently parallelized on the system. In the case of Si78B6H53 cluster, the special purpose computer with four EHPC units is almost 100 times faster than a lone Pentium III processor. Super-linear speed up has been observed at the matrix elements generation step.

Keywords: First principles DVXa calculation, Special purpose computer, Super-linear speed up, PC-cluster

Abstract in Japanese

Text in Japanese

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