Opening Ceremony at Leibnizrechenzentrum in Munich of Europe's fastest super

More than 100 people attended the ceremony which was opened by Professor Heinrich Nöth, President of the Bavarian Academy of Science. This supercomputer supports researchers in Bavaria but also in other countries of Germany. This underpins the high-tech location Bavaria within Germany.

Professor Heinz Hegering, Head of LRZ, mentioned the opening ceremony two years ago with the motto "fast computers - fats Networks", where the Gigabit Testbed South started and the Bavarian Supercomputer Fujitsu Siemens VPP700 with 52 processors. A supercomputer is an interdisciplinary instrument of research. Simulations can be done in a lot of research areas. Bavaria is spending 60 Mio DM (30 Mio EURO), the Federal Government adds 30 Mio DM (15 Mio. EURO) for the Hitachi SR8000-F1. The discussions in the Scientific Council (Wissenschaftsrat) during the decision phase, as 7 countries in Northern Germany presented a competitive alternative, led to new proposals. The Wissenschaftsrat presented on Mai 12 a paper " on future usage of HPC" which analyses the need of HPC and the requirements of a national supply concept. He added: "I have to thank Hitachi. We did not believed to hope that the delivery and installation of the system would be in time, as we signed the contract end of October 1999, and systems of that size are unique." The steering committee is installed that checks the proposals for scientific relevance. The present proposals would fill a computer with double the performance for two years. That demonstrates that it is necessary to offer such performance.

Next was the Minister of Science and Research of Bavaria, Hans Zehetmair. He thanked the German Ministry of Research, Wissenschaftsrat and DFG (German Research Society) for their clear decision for Bavaria and LRZ. This high-performance computer allows to attack grand challenge problems. A lot of proposals from Bavarian and Universities from all over Germany and Institutes from the Max-Planck Society are presented. They come from different research areas, structural and biochemistry, plasma physics, astro, gravitational and geophysics, cristallography, quantum and fluid mechanics. He then discussed a still open question. The Hitachi was financed for university users. Zehetmair went into details:"We don't want to exclude users from Max-Planck-Society and the Helmholtz Society of German Research Centers. It has to be clear that such a usage can not be a one-way lane. I wellcome the proposals of the Wissenschaftsrat to coordinate institutional overlapping and strategic planing and acquisition in HPC." Bavaria invests 9 Mio DM (4.5 Mio EURO) in KONWIHR, a follower of FORTWIHR. This is a network of competence for HPC, developing and porting the software, looking for applications and the transfer into industrial usage and trainig scientists. Dr. Uwe Thomas, Staatssekretär in the German Ministry of Research (BMBF), underpinned the investments in HPC, in 1999 and 2000. BMBF payed for the computers in the universities, the high-speed network that connects them to the 5 supercomputer centers in total 480 Mio DM (240 Mio. EURO). He said:" In the next years BMBF will take care for Germany staying ahead in HPC worldwide in applications and networking." One tool that supports this approach is UNICORE, a standardised web-based interface, he mentioned. It allows a user from elsewhere to use one of the HPC centers. UNICORE is a project, managed by Research Center Jülich. He commented the discussion that research centers use academic HPC systems that it is not always necessary that research centers have the big machines. HPC it is not only hardware but has the richness of applications.

Then application oriented talks gave an overview on the new possibilies the Hitachi SR8000-F1 will open. First Professor Franz Durst, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, discussed computational fluid dynamics applications, starting with cars and turbomachinery and ended with the simulation of bread baking. Professor Notker Rösch, TU Munich, presented a lot of applications in chemistry, pharmacy, nanostructured materials, catalysts and environmental systems. Top research is not possible without HPC, as the recent Nobel prizes in theoretical chemistry and computer chenistry demonstrate. Professor Werner Hanke presented new results in high-temperature semiconduction, HPC simulations and the benefits.

The last greeting talk gave Takao Kato, President and Chief Executive Officer, Information and Computer Systems, Hitachi Ltd., Japan. He mentioned the long cooperation of Japan and Germany. He said:" The strength and wealth of each nation can largely be said to be dependent on first, science and research, and second, on its application in helping improve every aspect of our lives, namely education, transportation, communications, environment, and utilities, just to mention a few of the many areas impacted." He is confident that the Hitachi SR8000-F1 with its new architecture will meet the demanding requirements.

Together Hans Zehetmair, Dr. Uwe Thomas, Professor Hegering and Takao Kato started the Hitachi SR-8000-F1 for their use from all over Germany.