The computer centre also supports the network in the campus, the connection to the WiN (German scientific high-speed network, deutsches Wissenschaftsnetz) and its access from other universities and high schools in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The main workhorse in Rostock is the T3E with a total of 44 DEC Alpha EV5.6 processors, 450 MHz clock, 900 MFlop/s, 128 MB per processor. There are 40 application PEs, 3 command and one OS PE. The total performance adds up to 39.6 GFlop/s with 5.5 GByte memory, for parallel applications (40 processors) this reduces to 36 GFlop/s and 5 GByte. Eight of these PEs are owned by IOW. The cooperation provides both parties with access to a major computer system.
The other compute server is a workstation cluster, formed out of six IBM RS/6000, 2 x 590, 2 x 580, 2 x 970 with memory from 256 upt to 768 MB. In addition there are I/O systems and PC/WS pools.
The Network
The primary network uses fibre optics to 21 locations, ATM with 155 Mbit/s. The total length is 70 km. The computer centre integrates speech, image and data transfer. The centre is connected to the German scientific broad band network (WiN), which allows 155 MBit/s, with 34 MBit/s. This year a second access to WiN from the University of Greifswald will be possible. Next year the transfer rate from Rostock will be upgrated to 155 MBit/s. It serves a node and connects the Fachhochschulen with 2 MBit/s. There will be a high-speed connection to Greifswald, which serves some Max-Planck Institutes and Fachhochschulen in the eastern area. This network can be used by SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) to access WiN. The schools are also connected through this line to WiN and the Internet.
Rostock's Services
There are several tasks, the centre has to fulfill:
- Planning and coordination of the IT/dataprocessing usage (structuring task)
- support and advisory services for users and cooperative work (realisation task)
- operation of the resources, network, server, special equipment (feasibility task)
- organising the processing, advisory and information services
- competence centre
Institute for Ostseeforschung (Inst. for Research of the Baltic Sea)
One project that is running on the SGI/Cray T3E is the modelling of the ecological system of the Baltic See. They use the Modular Ocean Model Version2 - MOM 2, GFDL Princeton, USA: MOM 2 is a software package for the numerical integration of the hydrodynamics equations in the ocean and is programmed in Fortran. At IOW MOM2 has been parallelised for the Cray T3E using Cray's shared-memory library, in close cooperation with Cray experts. MOM was coupled with a model of the ecological system. The program is used to estimate the results of anthropogeneous influences in the ecological system of the Baltic Sea. An important component is the theoretical description of the chemical-biological processes as well as the interaction and the control of physical processes. Because of circulation models with high resolution and the coupled chemical-biological components and the high number of their dynamical variables and the complex interconnection of the single processes, high-speed computing power is necessary.
Shipbuilding
The Cray T3E is used to examine several aspects in the field of shipbuilding. One is the three dimensional flow around a ship in real fluid. This is used to determine the propulsion behaviour of ships and the attacking hydrodynamic forces at controlled movements. Here one needs a detailed knowledge of the flow around a ship including its propulsion and the navigation systems. In the last years a lot of programs for the numerical integration of the movement equations in real fluid have been developed but now it is necessary to compute the whole system. Thus one can optimise propulsion systems and develop new, unconventional ideas. As the discretisation has to be very fine, these computations need high-performance systems.
Other research areas are the modelling of turbulent flow fields. All this research is done by the Institute of Fluid Dynamics.
Biomedicine
The influence of Osteoporosis on the stiffness of the vertebrae, examinations of the biomechanics. The finite element models for the vertebrae need about 1.4 million equations. The T3E now allows a fine grain model.
Miscellaneous
Among others the FB (Fachbereich) Physics, teleconsulting for health riscs and VHDL synthesis of computing devices and the laboratory for communication systems need the T3E or the support of the computer centre.
