Entries filed under “HPTC”

Late last week Brown University and IBM announced a new super at Brown’s Center for Computation and Visualization

Examples of the wide areas of research that will take advantage of the increased computing horsepower include advances in genomics that could lead to drugs for treating specific diseases such as cancer; investigation of the mechanics of human and animal movement; exploration of the web of animal life and ocean ecosystems; and studies of the terrain of planetary bodies, such as Mars.

The presso refers to this as “a system” capable of 14 TFLOPS, which is a bit confusing given the description

The new supercomputer – with a total of 1,440 microprocessors – is based on three IBM iDataPlex systems, equal to the size of six refrigerators; an IBM Cluster 1350; and multiple IBM storage systems running General Parallel File System, supported by IBM Global Services.

SDSC is following up on its DASH experiment with a full-fledged system for data-intensive computing supported by flash drives

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego has been awarded a five-year, $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build and operate a powerful supercomputer dedicated to solving critical science and societal problems now overwhelmed by the avalanche of data generated by the digital devices of our era.

The new system, named “Gordon” (get it?), will use flash memory for high data throughput and virtualization software from ScaleMP to create large shared-memory “supernodes.” The system is being built by Appro and will be installed in the mid-2011 timeframe. The completed system will have 245 peak TFLOPS, 64 TB of RAM, and 256 TB of flash memory.

“We are clearly excited about the potential for Gordon,” said SDSC Interim Director Michael Norman, who is also the project’s principal investigator. “This HPC system will allow researchers to tackle a growing list of critical ‘data-intensive’ problems. These include the analysis of individual genomes to tailor drugs to specific patients, the development of more accurate models to predict the impact of earthquakes on buildings and other structures, and simulations that offer greater insights into what’s happening to the planet’s climate.”

There is much more in the release, which is quite detailed.

Late last week China Daily reported the launch of a new petaFLOPS super in China

The birth of the supercomputer, named “Tianhe”, which means “Milky Way”, makes China the second country, after the United States, to build a petaflop computer.

There is some confusion in the press about whether China is the second or third country to boast a PFLOPS. The China Top100 actually reveals that the machine is a peak PFLOPS machine, which makes it number 3, after Germany and JUGENE.  The actual LINPACK score is 563,100 GFLOPS, which would have made it number 4 on the June list.

The new machine was announced concurrently with the annual update of the China Top100 (Google Translation to English of the Top100 site here). The machine is located at the National University of Defense Technology and is built out of Intel Xeon E5540s and AMD Radeon graphics cards for a GPU assist; the interconnect is IB. Tianhe is 5-ish more times more powerful that the previous champ, the Dawn 5000A, which was built out of AMD Barcelonas.

Supported by the national high-tech research and development program, also known as the 863 program, development of Tianhe has involved more than 200 computer experts who spent about two years in designing and producing the petaflop supercomputer, said Zhang Yulin, president of the defense university.

…Tianhe, made up of 103 refrigerator-sized silver gray cabinets, occupies an area of nearly 1,000 sq m and weighs 155 tons, containing 6,144 Intel CPUs and 5,120 AMD GPUs, with a storage capacity of 1 PB.

You can also find coverage at China’s official state-run news agency. A few weeks ago I pointed to the Asia Top500 (which actually has only 45 entries), as a regional entry alongside the country-specific Russia Top50. Someone less jaded than me would argue that the rise of the baby TopX lists is a reflection of the increasing recognition around the world of the importance of advanced computational capability in maintaining scientific and technical capability.

Penguin Computing announced this week that they’ve installed an 800-node core super at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Simulation and Modeling.

The university has added a powerful new Penguin Intel Nehalem-based 800-core Linux cluster to an existing 116-node cluster and integrated the two using Penguin’s Scyld cluster management software. The Penguin hardware and software solution significantly extends the compute power at the University of Pittsburgh while also providing more efficient and productive cluster management across the entire environment.

According to Penguin CEO Charlie Wuischpard, U Pitt has also acquired acquired a Penguin nVidia GPU system. If I’m able to get details on that system, I’ll update this post.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced the opening celebrations for new buildings on its campus that will boost research “in biological, computational and subsurface science and developments in bioenergy, carbon sequestration and homeland security.”

It’s interesting to me that these facilities seem to emphasize both the physical and computational sciences. In my day job its often one or the other, not both

In the [Biological Sciences Facility] BSF, scientists will focus on gaining a fundamental understanding of biological systems that are needed to more effectively use microorganisms for renewable bioenergy and carbon sequestration; prevent contaminants from moving through groundwater; and improve our systems-level understanding of how low-dose radiation and other factors affect human health. BSF will house state-of-the-art analytical equipment and powerful computing capabilities that enable scientists to combine experimental and computational approaches. For example, scientists are studying communities of microbes in hopes of predicting their behavior and then manipulating them to produce a valuable product or process such as renewable bioenergy.

In the [Computational Sciences Facility]CSF, scientists will develop solutions for the growing challenge of data overload -common to the scientific and national security communities. For example, a single scientific experiment can produce a terabyte of data – too much for a person to interpret. Intelligence analysts face similar challenges collecting and processing real-time data streams – from video to audio to text -they must analyze to better predict and detect threats. PNNL researchers are leaders in the development of data-intensive computing solutions – a way to capture, manage, analyze and help users understand massive amounts of data using innovative computing hardware and software technologies. CSF includes 10,000 square feet of raised floor space to accommodate data-intensive and high-performance computing hardware and data storage solutions.

CSF is home to the Center for Adaptive Supercomputing Software, which provides solutions for improving the execution speed of irregular, data-intensive applications like power grid analysis and bioinformatics. PNNL researchers who support the National Visualization and Analytics Center will also work in CSF. NVAC is a Department of Homeland Security program operated by PNNL that is helping local and state emergency responders and government analysts understand and address terrorist threats.

The University of Tennessee announced this week that their 100,000 core Cray XT5 super has become the fourth machine to break the PFLOPS barrier, and is the first academic machine to do so.

“At over a petaflop of peak computing power, and the ability to routinely run full machine jobs, Kraken will dominate large-scale NSF computing in the near future,” said Phil Andrews, director of the National Institute for Computational Science, which manages Kraken. “Its unprecedented computational capability and total available memory will allow academic users to treat problems that were previously inaccessible.”

This is a machine that the university, and the state, is rightly proud of, and you can the work it’s taken to make the project a reality within the state between the lines of the press release

Along the way, the computer, funded by a $65 million grant to UT Knoxville from the National Science Foundation, has created more than 25 full-time jobs and helped place Tennessee at the center of big science. Kraken first entered operation in late 2007, and has expanded through a series of planned upgrades that have made it progressively faster and more powerful. The computer’s most recent upgrade was officially completed today.

…“Having Kraken has made UT Knoxville a magnet for great faculty and world-leading research,” said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “Being the first academic computer this powerful means that we will continue not only to enhance our reputation as a research institution, but also that we will continue to take the lead in making life better for people both in Tennessee and around the world.”