Altix

Altix
Company type	Product line
Industry	Computer hardware
Predecessor	Origin 3000 server family
Founded	2003
Founder	Silicon Graphics (later Silicon Graphics International)
Products	Servers, supercomputers
Parent	Silicon Graphics International

Altix represents a series of server and supercomputer products developed by Silicon Graphics (later known as Silicon Graphics International), utilizing Intel processors. This product line followed the MIPS/IRIX-based Origin 3000 server family.

History

Unveiled on January 7, 2003, the Altix 3000 lineup incorporated Intel Itanium 2 CPUs alongside SGI's proprietary NUMAlink interconnect technology. Initially, it supported configurations of up to 64 processors running Linux as a unified system image and was delivered with the SGI Advanced Linux Environment, compatible with Red Hat Advanced Server.

By August 2003, users were operating Linux on Altix systems comprising 128 and 256 processors. By March 2004, SGI had formally endorsed Linux systems with up to 256 processors running a kernel derived from version 2.4. Over time, the proprietary SGI Advanced Linux Environment was phased out in favor of standard, unaltered SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) releases, beginning with SLES versions 8 and 9.

Altix platforms eventually accommodated configurations of as many as 512 processors on standard Linux installations using SLES 9 SP1. Native support for unmodified Red Hat Enterprise Linux was introduced starting with the Altix 3700 Bx2 model, compatible with RHEL versions 4 and 5, subject to processor limits set by Red Hat.

On November 14, 2005, SGI introduced the Altix 4000 series, also powered by Itanium 2 processors. Both Altix 3000 and Altix 4000 families employed a distributed shared memory multiprocessor architecture. In July 2006, SGI increased support for systems with up to 1024 processors running standard Linux with SLES 10. The Altix 4700 received certification for RHEL versions 4 and 5, adhering to Red Hat’s processor restrictions.

The Altix brand further expanded to include systems built around multi-core Intel Xeon CPUs, such as the Altix XE rackmount servers, Altix ICE blade servers, and Altix UV supercomputers.

NASA's Columbia, which operated between 2004 and 2013, consisted of a cluster of twenty Altix 3000 units totaling 10,240 microprocessors linked via InfiniBand.

Altix 3000

The Altix 3000 marked SGI’s initial generation within the Altix product line before being succeeded by the Altix 4000 in 2004 and discontinued by late 2006.

The entry-level Altix 330 model is constructed from compact 1U compute modules interconnected through NUMAlink, supporting configurations ranging from one to sixteen Itanium 2 processors and between two and 128 GB of RAM. The Altix 1330 aggregates multiple Altix 330 units into clusters using either Gigabit Ethernet or quad-lane (InfiniBand) connectivity.

Introduced in 2005, the mid-tier Altix 350 supports up to thirty-two Itanium 2 CPUs and operates on Linux, replacing SGI's previous IRIX system. It includes DDR SDRAM memory, PCI-X expansion slots, and accommodates either SCSI or SATA storage drives within a compact two-rack-unit chassis. The Altix 1350 serves as a clustering solution for multiple Altix 350 nodes. By December of 2006, the Altix XE (based on Xeon processors) and the Itanium-powered Altix 450 replaced the Altix 350.

The Altix 3300 supports between four and twelve CPUs with up to forty-eight gigabytes of memory housed in a space-efficient rack enclosure. At the high end, the Altix 3700 scales from sixteen to five hundred twelve processors and supports memory capacities reaching two terabytes within tall rack configurations. A variant called Prism adds enhanced graphics processing capabilities.

Built upon the third generation NUMAflex architecture featuring NUMAlink 4 interconnect technology, the Altix 3000 allows single system images up to sixty-four processors; larger setups require partitioning into separate domains. Its fundamental building block is the C-brick—a four-rack-unit chassis containing two nodes; each node has two Itanium 2 processors connected via Super-Bedrock ASIC crossbar switches. Each node is equipped with sixteen DDR DIMM slots supporting memory modules from four to sixteen gigabytes each.

The top-tier Altix 3700 Bx2 extends scalability dramatically, supporting as many as two thousand forty-eight Itanium 2 CPUs and up to twenty-four terabytes of RAM distributed across multiple rack enclosures.

Altix 4000

SGI's Altix 4000 lineup advanced their Itanium-based server offerings, featuring two primary models: the mid-tier Altix 450 and the top-tier Altix 4700.

The Altix 4700 can accommodate as many as 2,048 dual-core Itanium processors (Montvale revision), interconnected via NUMAlink 4 using a fat-tree network design. Its memory capacity reaches up to 128 TB, which increases to 192 TB when utilizing single-socket blades equipped with 16 GB DIMMs.

These systems are constructed from blade units installed within individual rack units (IRUs). Each IRU is a 10U chassis containing power supplies, router boards, and controllers. An IRU can house ten single-wide blades or a combination of single- and double-wide blades, fitting into standard 42U racks that can support up to four IRUs.

Blades are categorized as either compute or memory nodes. Compute blades include one or two PAC611 sockets designed for Itanium processors, a Super-Hub ASIC chipset, and eight DIMM slots. Single-socket blades maximize bandwidth by allocating dedicated front-side bus and local memory resources, whereas dual-socket blades do not enable hyperthreading. Memory blades serve to expand RAM independently of processor count, featuring twelve DIMM slots per blade. Supported DIMM sizes range from 1 GB up to 8 GB officially, with 16 GB modules also usable though not officially supported by SGI.

Multiple servers can be linked together on the same NUMAlink fabric, theoretically scaling to as many as 8,192 nodes (equivalent to 16,384 operating system CPUs).

Altix XE

The Altix XE series is built around Intel Xeon x86-64 processors. Notable models include:

Altix XE210: Supports up to two Dual- or Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors from the 5100 or 5300 series, offers up to 32 GB DDR2 667 MHz FBDIMM memory, includes PCIe and PCI-X expansion slots, and provides three SATA/SAS drive bays.
Altix XE240: Compatible with similar processor and memory options as the XE210, features two different PCI slot configurations, and includes five SATA/SAS drive bays.
Altix XE270: A compact 2U system equipped with Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, supports up to eighteen DDR3 DIMMs ranging between 2 and 8 GB each, multiple PCIe and PCI-X expansion slots, eight SATA/SAS drive bays with optional hardware RAID levels (0,1,5,6,10).
Altix XE310: Launched in 2007, this model contains two nodes per server chassis and supports up to four Dual- or Quad-Core Xeon processors from the 5100/5300 series along with up to 64 GB DDR2 memory. It also offers PCIe slots and four SATA/SAS drive bays.
Altix XE340: A one-rack-unit system housing two compute nodes powered by Intel Xeon 5500 series processors; each node supports up to twelve DDR3 DIMMs. It includes PCIe x16 slots and four SATA drive bays with optional SAS connectivity and RAID support.
Altix XE500: This three-rack-unit configuration features Intel Xeon 5500 series CPUs, supports up to eighteen DDR3 DIMMs per system, multiple PCIe slots, and eight SATA/SAS drives with optional hardware RAID capabilities.
Additionally, there are cluster configurations such as the Altix XE1200 and XE1300.

All Altix XE platforms are compatible with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as VMware virtualization solutions.

Altix ICE

The Altix ICE blade architecture employs diskless compute blades based on Intel Xeon processors managed through a Hierarchical Management Framework (HMF) designed for scalability and high performance. Unlike previous Itanium-based Altix systems that operated a single-system image across more than a thousand processors, Altix ICE clusters utilize standard distributions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These clusters have demonstrated scalability beyond 51,200 cores as exemplified by NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer.

The ICE 8200LX enclosure contains two switch blades each with four DDR InfiniBand ports plus one high-performance plane; the ICE 8200EX model expands this configuration to four switch blades and two planes. Both enclosures support network topologies such as hypercube or fat tree and accommodate up to sixteen compute blades per rack unit.

Available compute blade variants include IP-83 and IP-85 models based on Intel Xeon 5200/5400 series processors and the IP-95 model using Intel Xeon 5500 series CPUs. The ICE 8400 platform introduced in November 2011 supports either Intel Xeon 5500/5600 series or AMD Opteron 6100 processors.

By 2013, these systems had integrated Xeon Phi coprocessors to boost parallel processing performance.

Altix UV

Introduced in November 2009, the Altix UV supercomputing platform integrated an upgraded NUMAlink interconnect (NUMAlink 5) with Intel Xeon 7500 processors built on the Nehalem-EX architecture. These systems operated on either SuSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, offering scalability from 32 up to 2,048 processing cores and supporting as much as 16 terabytes of shared memory accessible within a unified system image.

During 2010 and 2011, SGI transitioned away from the Altix branding for its new server offerings. The Altix UV and Altix ICE product lines were renamed "SGI UV" and "SGI ICE," correspondingly, while the Altix XE series was rebranded as "Rackable."

References

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (June 12, 2007). Altix 3000 Rackmount Owner's Guide.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (June 12, 2007). SGI Altix 1330 Cluster Datasheet.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (June 12, 2007). SGI Altix 330 Server Datasheet.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (June 12, 2007). SGI Altix 350 Server Datasheet.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (June 12, 2007). SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 Servers and Supercomputers Datasheet.

External links