As part of the next upgrade to Pleiades 1,728 Intel Sandy Bridge nodes will arrive at the NAS facility on March 30th. Each node contains two Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors with 8 cores each (16 cores per node).

Once the new nodes are operational, they are expected to result in approximately 30% more computing capacity for Pleiades. 

The new nodes will replace 1728 Harpertown nodes, which are now over 3 years old. A portion of these nodes will be reactivated in May or June.

To prepare space for the new hardware, Pleiades will be down for approximately 12 hours on March 21st. During the Sandy Bridge node integration from March 21st through mid-April, Pleiades will temporarily have about 90% of its current capacity. 

An additional upgrade to Pleiades is expected in late FY 2012. These upgrades will result in a compute environment that is enhanced in both capability and in the ability to meet future expansions.

For more detailed information on Pleiades, see the Pleiades Hardware Overview.