Avi Blizovsky
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Press Release
7/9/04
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in the USA
Purchase an Altix SGI supercomputer with 1,024 Intel Intenium processors
SGI's Altix system will offer researchers a unique configuration that is currently not available to academic researchers within the Internet infrastructure and will expand the boundaries of research in a wide range of fields
SGI (Silicon Graphics) announced that the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the USA (NCSA - National Center for Supercomputing) purchased through SGI's business partner, James River Technical, an SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) system with shared memory, as well as storage technology .
The Altix SGI® system, known as Cobalt, will consist of 1,024 Itanium® processors
Intel® on Linux® operating system. The system will include three terabytes of accessible global memory and a 370 terabyte InfinithStorage ® SGI system that will serve as the center's file sharing system, and will be accessible to other high-performance computing resources at NCSA. The system will increase NCSA's total computing power to more than 35 teraflops and the storage disk volume to three quarters of a petabyte.
The SGI system will expand the boundaries of scientists' research in a wide range of fields. Thus, for example, cosmologists will be able to perform large-scale simulations of the evolution of the universe, while atmospheric researchers will be able to receive from the system on-demand data analyzes in response to severe weather conditions.
"SGI's Altix system will offer researchers a unique configuration that is not currently available to academic researchers within the Internet infrastructure," said Rob Pennington, director of NCSA. "This system will make it possible to manage very large computational applications, to create and support large data sets and databases in memory, and will provide the ability to perform interactive data analyzes in real time."
NCSA even intends to integrate the SGI SMP system with other distributed national resources, through the TeraGrid/Extensible Terascale Facility internet infrastructure.
The Altix will diversify NCSA's current high-performance computing environment (Tungsten, Mercury, Copper, Titan and Platinum) by providing an SMP environment with a large shared memory pool and advanced I/O capabilities. The system will even be equipped with Altair PBS Pro work management software, the CXFS ™ file sharing system and the 9500 terabyte TP370 infiniteStorage ® SGI storage disk array. SGI will provide a shared time and storage environment between completely different systems within NCSA's computing environment.
"Researchers will no longer have to spend time matching challenging research goals with the system's memory and capabilities," said Dave Parry, senior vice president of the Servers and Platforms Group.
at SGI. "Instead, the challenges will only be reflected in efforts to develop new approaches to solving larger problems."
This purchase is one of two orders for supercomputing in the US, which SGI reported on June 23. These orders will be delivered in the first two quarters of SGI's next fiscal year, which ends in June 2005. The storage components of the Cobalt system were installed at NCSA in June 2004, and full assembly of the servers is scheduled to be completed by the end of calendar year 2004. The target date for full availability of the system to scientists is the March 1, 2005.
A supercomputer in the US Army
The US military is developing a new supercomputer to perform simulations of complex weapons systems it plans to put into use. It will be one of the 20 most powerful supercomputers on the planet. His name will be Stryker and he is supposed to perform 10 trillion mathematical operations in one second (what is known in computer language as 10 teraflops) at the peak of his activity. It will run on the Linux system and will therefore be the most powerful computer running on the competing and alternative operating system to Microsoft.
The price of the "toy" will be 15 million dollars. It is being built at the Army's Central Research Laboratory in Maryland. It will contain 2304 AMD Opteron processors at a speed of 2.2 GHz within 1186 separate operating systems that will be interconnected by a super-fast communication network. The army will use this computer to test new materials from which future weapons will be made.
For example - the light but strong metals of dry tanks and composite materials that will be in them. "This way we can build virtual models of weapons, improve them during the planning process before they are sent to create", explained the heads of the project.
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In July of this year, the US Navy ordered a fast IBM supercomputer to prepare extremely detailed weather forecasts. It will be able to perform 20 trillion computational operations in one second. Among other things, it is also possible to perform simulations of nuclear weapons tests on it.
The most powerful and fastest supercomputer in the world called Earth Simulator has now been built by the Japanese company NEC for the Marine Science Center in Yokosuka. Its peak speed: 40 trillion computational operations in one second.
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