Gordon is the first supercomputer to use SSDs

When fully configured and deployed, Gordon will feature 245TFLOPs of total compute power, 64TB of DRAM, 256TB of flash memory, and 4PB of disk storage (4 quadrillion bytes of data). For sheer power, when complete, Gordon should rate among the top 30 or so supercomputers in the world.

“Moving a physical disk-head to accomplish random I/O is so last-century. Indeed, Charles Babbage designed a computer based on moving mechanical parts almost two centuries ago. With respect to I/O, it’s time to stop trying to move protons and just move electrons. With the aid of flash solid-state drives (SSDs), this system should do latency-bound file reads 10 times faster and more efficiently than anything done today,” said Allan Snavely, associate director of SDSC and co-principal investigator for this innovative system.

Gordon supercomputer is slated for installation by Appro International in mid-2011, and will become a key part of a network of next-generation high-performance computers (HPC) being made available to the research community through an open-access national grid.