German Research Computer QPACE Most Energy Efficient in the World
QPACE racks installed at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre.
At the 2009 Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Oregon (USA), the high-performance computer QPACE (QCD Parallel Computing on the Cell) was recognized today as the most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world. QPACE is at the head of the Green500 list, which provides a global ranking of energy-efficient supercomputers. QPACE was developed by an academic consortium of universities and research centers as well as the German IBM research and development center in Böblingen within the framework of a state-sponsored research association.
Within the consortium, the development effort was led by the University of Regensburg, while the research centers DESY and Jülich also assumed central responsibilities. Additional members included the University of Wuppertal, the University of Ferrara (Italy), the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) as well as the companies Eurotech, Knürr, Zollner and Xilinx. The QPACE core team consists of approximately 20 researchers and developers. (more…)
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New $20 Million Supercomputer To Solve Critical Science and Societal Problems
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.
Among other features, this unique and innovative supercomputer will employ a vast amount of flash memory to help speed solutions now hamstrung by slower spinning disk technology. Also, new “supernodes” will exploit virtual shared-memory software to create large shared-memory systems that reduce solution times and yield results for applications that now tax even the most advanced supercomputers.
Called Gordon, SDSC’s latest supercomputer is slated for installation by Appro International, Inc. in mid-2011, and will become a key part of a network of next-generation high-performance computers (HPC) being made available to the research community through an open-access national grid. Details of the new system were announced in advance of SC09, the leading international conference on high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, to be held in Portland, Oregon, November 14-20.
Gordon is the follow-on to SDSC’s previously announced Dash system, the first supercomputer to use flash devices. Dash is a finalist in the Data Challenge at SC09.
“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.” (more…)
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World’s Fastest Supercomputer Successfully Tackles Scientific Challenges
The world’s fastest supercomputer, Roadrunner, at Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed its initial “shakedown” phase doing accelerated petascale computer modeling and simulations of a variety of unclassified, fundamental science projects.
The Roadrunner system is now beginning its transition to classified computing to assure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
Capitalizing on this national security investment, 10 unclassified projects were selected for this opportunity to use Roadrunner, a hybrid-architecture, 1.105 petaflop/s computing system, during a six-month period that ended in September 2009.
These projects were also used to put a “work load” on the Roadrunner system so that scientists could optimize the way large codes are able to run on the machine. The Roadrunner open science projects represent the best of science, and the value of enabling technologies at Los Alamos, and were selected from across the Laboratory by a special committee. (more…)
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New Flash Memory Super Computer
By Jan Zverina
Leveraging lightning-fast technology already familiar to many from the micro storage world of digital cameras, thumb drives and laptop computers, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego today unveiled a “super-sized” version – a “flash” memory-based supercomputer that accelerates investigation of a wide range of data-intensive science problems.
The new High-Performance Computing (HPC) system, dubbed “Dash,” is an element of the Triton Resource, an integrated, data-intensive resource primarily designed to support UC San Diego and UC researchers that went online earlier this summer. As envisioned, this “system within a system” will help researchers looking for solutions to particularly data-intensive problems that arise in astrophysics, genomics and many other domains of science. (more…)
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New Supercomputer Fastest of its Type in World
by Aaron Hoover
Alan George (right) talks with Ian Troxel, a doctoral candidate in ECE about their eartlier efforts to build the first supercomputer to be launched into space. (University of Florida)
A supercomputer named Novo-G described by its lead designer as likely the most powerful computer of its kind in the world became operational this week at the University of Florida.
Novo-G gets the first part of its name from the Latin term for “make anew, change, alter,” and the second from “G” for “genesis.” A “reconfigurable” computer, it can rearrange its internal circuitry to suit the task at hand. Applications range from space satellites to research supercomputers — anywhere size, energy and high speed are important, said Alan George, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of UF’s National Science Foundation Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing. (more…)
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Coordinated Cyberinfrastructure will Accelerate Solutions to Societal Challenges
(But Data Deluge a Growing Problem)
Applications such as earthquake simulation involve analysis of tremendous amounts of data, enabled by modern computational and data cyberinfrastructure. (Amit Chourasia - Visualization Services, SDSC Simulation Credits: Kim Olsen et. al. @SCEC)
Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, will visit China later this month, where she will speak about the challenges of managing the exponentially increasing amount of digital information, and how a coordinated cyberinfrastructure will accelerate solutions to societal challenges, such as predicting the effects of large-scale earthquakes.
“Applications such as earthquake simulation involve analysis of tremendous amounts of data, enabled by modern computational and data cyberinfrastructure,” said Berman, who is scheduled to participate in the Association for Computing Machinery’s Distinguished Speakers Program to be held in China April 20-24. (more…)
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Supercomputer Will Aid Deep Space Probes
Canada’s Nation Research Council (NRC) is playing a vital role in upgrading the world’s biggest radio telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA) at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico. When its upgrade, begun in 2001, goes online in 2012, the radio telescope will be known as the Expanded VLA.
As part of this $100 million project, the NRC Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, British Columbia, is designing and building a highly specialized supercomputer called a “correlator.” The correlator uses a unique, patented NRC technology called wideband digital architecture (WIDAR) to process the very wide bandwidth signals with far more efficiency and flexibility than possible with the VLA’s original correlator. (more…)
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