IBM Scalable POWERparallel

IBM Scalable POWERparallel

Also known as	IBM RS/6000 SP
Developer	IBM
Type	Supercomputer platform
Release date	Feb 1993 (Feb 1993)
Discontinued	Oct 2000 (Oct 2000)
CPU	IBM POWER PowerPC
Successor	IBM Blue Gene

Scalable POWERparallel (SP) is a series of supercomputers from IBM. SP systems were part of the IBM RISC System/6000 (RS/6000) family, and were also called the RS/6000 SP. The first model, the SP1, was introduced in February 1993, and new models were introduced throughout the 1990s until the RS/6000 was succeeded by eServer pSeries in October 2000. The SP is a distributed memory system, consisting of multiple RS/6000-based nodes interconnected by an IBM-proprietary switch called the High Performance Switch (HPS). The nodes are clustered using software called PSSP, which is mainly written in Perl.

Computer scientist Marc Snir was awarded the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for his contributions to supercomputing, which included his work on the SP.^[1]