Vectors - VPPs - are still aliveMunich 30 October 2000 The second day opened with the FISUM session, where VPP sites reported on their experiences. As the Japanese sites showed their structure and users, it was quite interesting to see, what they are doing.
Kyoto University
This university uses a VPP800 (8 GFlop/s, 8 GByte) with 63 processors, this sums up to 504 GFlop/s and 504 GByte aggregated memory. This system is connected to 1 TByte RAID storage. Additionally they use two Fujitsu SMPs, former called GP7000F, now PrimePower systems based on UltraSparc-type processors. One has 24 CPUs, 24 GByte main memory and 432 GB RAID. The other is equipped with 8 CPUs, 8 GByte memory and 162 GB RAID.
They listed the usage of their system. Surprisingly no. 1 is meteorology with nearly 22% CPU time in 1999, and ahead all the years since 1995. This means about 20 CPU hours per day. It is followed by thermology, heat transfer with 14%, physical chemistry 7%, aerospace 6 % and resource development the same percentage.
Additionally ANU, the Australian National University, presented their site. It is the HPC facility of the University but provides additionally the National Facility for the Australian national HPC program, APAC, with supercomputing. The user base is mixed with strong emphasis on computational chemistry and biology.
The main areas, which are supported by APAC, are to develop tools and techniques in:
The center uses Fujitsu vector systems since 1987 and Sparc parallel systems since 1991. Currently they have a VPP300/13, 8 PEs have 512 MB, 5 PEs 2 Gbyte memory. Furtheron the Department of Computer Science uses AP3000 (and AP 1000) and a 192 processor Pentium Beowulf cluster. The center itself operates a 13 processor Alpha Beowulf cluster. A large, approximately 1 TFlop/s APAC national system is being installed.
For details:
http://anusf.anu.edu.au.
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