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| 18 December 2000 |
EuroFlash no. 439
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Primeur is the premier news service on HPCN and supercomputing in Europe. Primeur Weekly delivers the news each week in your e-mail box. Check out the Primeur web site for the Calendar, the Analysis section with background on the TOP500, the Monthly en Live! special issues, information on HPCN centres and industry.
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Shell International Exploration & Production B.V. and IBM develop and deploy the world's largest Linux supercomputer. The supercomputer will comprise 1024 IBM X-Series servers, packaged in 32 racks, all running Linux.
Using the large Linux cluster LosLobos, researchers at The University of New Mexico's Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center have achieved a nearly one-million-fold speedup in solving the phylogeny reconstruction problem for the family of twelve Bluebell species (Campanulaceae) from the flowers' chloroplast gene order data. Phylogenies derived from gene order data may prove crucial in answering some fundamental open questions in biomolecular evolution.
SuSE Linux 7.0 for 64-Bit-Alpha systems has been released. In addition to the Alpha platform, SuSE Linux also supports Intel and PowerPC as well as the SPARC and S/390 architectures.
The conference on parallel processing, PARCO2001, Naples, Italy, on 4-7 September 2001 has released a second call for papers. Closing date January 15.
The Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and gedas iberia, an Information Technology company owned by the Volkswagen group, have joined to create the only Virtual Reality Centre (CRV) in Spain with a Computer Animated Virtual Environment (CAVE) system. The CAVE system consists of a room-sized environment, equipped with screens on three walls and on the floor. Four projectors provide full colour three-dimensional graphics that can be viewed with stereoscopic glasses. The images completely surround the users, who can interact with the environment. The CAVE system can be used for different types of applications. The Barcelona CRV is working in naval and car design, medicine and architecture.
On October 26th, IBM Corporation and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) signed an agreement for creating the CEPBA-IBM Research Institute (CIRI). Its main objectives are research, development of applications and advanced technology transfer to industry. This centre will specialise in computer architecture and supercomputing. CIRI has an IBM SP Power3 supercomputer with 64 375 MHz processors, which will be upgraded to 128 processors on March.
Debis Systemhaus Solutions for Research (DSSR) inaugurated end of November its new vector supercomputer, a NEC SX-5 with 16 processors. DSSR is a joint venture of DLR (German Aerospace Center) and debis Systemhaus, which is engaged in the Hoechstleistungsrechner fuer Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft GmbH (HWW HPC for science and industry) in Stuttgart. HWW is a joint enterprise of debis Systemhaus (40%), Porsche AG (10%) and the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the Universities of Heidelberg, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart (50%). This computer opens new dimensions for the great challenges in research and industry.
Fujitsu Siemens Computer (FSC) sets new records in SAP SD (Sales and Distribution) benchmark with 23 000 users, the first time more than the 20 000 users barrier. FSC used is flagship the Primepower 2000, 64 Sparc64 Processor system running Solaris 8, as the database server and 161 application servers based on Primergy H400, 4-processor SMP running RedHat Linux 6.1.
Six German States (Bundesländer) have formed a consortium to acquire one big 5 Tflop/s category supercomputer for their researchers. The machine will cost 20 million Euro and will be distributed over two supercomputer centres. It is the first time six states come together to buy one supercomputer. The Bundesländer of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen and Schleswig-Holstein did, and agreed to each pay a share of the machine. The size of each country's contribution depends on the number of inhabitants, and gross product. The states pay 50% of the machine, the other 50% comes from the federal government. The peak performance will be 3 to 5 Tflops/s and the memory size 3 Tbyte. The federal German Science Council offically approved the proposal late November. The two centres that will jointly operate the machine are the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB) and the Regionales Rechenzentrum für Niedersachsen (RRZN).
Professor Shinji Matsui's research group at the Himeji Institute of Technology (HIT) and Seiko Instruments Inc. (SII), have made the world's smallest wine glass. Using highly advanced manufacturing techniques that can produce three dimensional (3D) objects at the nanometer scale (one nanometer is one-billionth of a meter), researchers built the glass from carbon with an external diameter of only 2,750 nanometers (nm), approximately 20,000 times smaller than a normal sized glass. Whether they did use it for sake to celebrate their success is not known.
IBM has launched production of new microchips for servers, communications gear and pervasive computing products. The new technology, named CMOS 9S, unites copper wiring, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors and improved, low-k dielectric insulation to build chip circuits as small as 0.13 microns.
diaBase is now available for Linux-based servers . It offers e offers an integrated platform for multi-format streaming, content management and content transfer supporting popular streaming formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, RealVideo, RealAudio, QuickTime and MP3.
MSC.Nastran and MSC.Software will be offered on Linux on SGI Itanium servers.
According to International Data Corporation's (IDC) Q3CY00 Server Tracker Report, the tally shows that Sun registered 48 percent market share of the world wide Unix server shipments -- shipping more than three times as many servers as HP, nearly four times as many as Compaq and almost five times that of IBM. Sun has been named the No. 1 vendor in total Unix server shipments for a record 14th consecutive quarter. Sun also continued its leadership in world wide Unix server revenue with 39 percent market share - HP, IBM and Compaq posted 23 percent, 16 percent and nine percent respectively.
A consortium formed by NASA Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University and 11 other major information technology companies will try eliminate failures in computing systems that are critical to human safety and the welfare of society.
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