Blue Gene uses Linux only for the filesystem

Posted Jun 29, 2005 1:11 UTC (Wed) by gaurav89 (guest, #30727)
Parent article: Linux and the Top500

I am not sure what everyone is so happy about. Its not like Linux had any role in making Blue Gene the fastest super computer.

Blue Gene has a custom single user mode kernel known as CNK - Compute Mode Kernel - a fairly small piece of C++ code. Linux is only used for the filesystem - which although important - is not what defines a supercomputer. The top 500 tests are a test of the MPI implementation and raw processing power in which Linux is playing no role at least in the Blue Gene family. Blue Gene could just as well have used IBM's AIX instead of Linux and still attained the same results.