Finnish supercomputer centre CSC buys Tflop/s IBM RS/6000 SP

 Helsinki 19 May 00 The Finnish academic supercomputing center - CSC - has selected an IBM RS/6000 SP system as its next generation supercomputer for the Ministry of Education. Upon installation, the IBM system will be one of the most powerful supercomputers on the European continent. The machine will have a peak in the Tflop/s range in 2002, making it one of the fastest computers in Europe. The new IBM RS/6000 SP will be installed at the CSC in October 2000, replacing eventually a Cray T3E. WM-data, an IBM business partner, will install the system, valued at 30 million Finnish marks or 4.5 million euro.

Finnish supercomputer centre CSC buys Tflop/s IBM RS/6000 SP

"The new IBM RS/6000 SP will assist CSC in developing the ultimate in high performance computing services," said Matti Ihamuotila, Managing Director of CSC. "In the long run, the vast scalability of the system architecture ensures the smooth growth of computing performance for research projects through the year 2005."

The SP will serve research projects needing peak performance and the utilization of parallel programming codes, including materials physics, computational fluid dynamics and quantum chemistry. The system may also be used by the CSC for advanced weather forecasting.

In 2002, the system will be upgraded with IBM's POWER4 microprocessors, which will increase performance to the teraflop level. In that phase the

IBM SP will consist of several hundreds of processors. CSC has an option to further increase the system with new processors in 2003.

When completed, the IBM RS/6000 SP at the CSC will rank in the top 25 on the TOP500 list of Supercomputing sites, which ranks the world's fastest supercomputers. IBM is the leader in high performance computing according to the TOP500 List of Supercomputers. IBM now leads all vendors with 141 systems -- all RS/6000 SPs -- up 36 percent from one year ago.

About RS/6000 More than 1,000,000 IBM RS/6000 systems have been shipped to over 150,000 commercial and technical customers around the world. The RS/6000 family of computers feature IBM RISC-based microprocessors and run AIX, IBM's Unix operating system.

 

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