New Dutch National Supercomputer inauguratedThe Hague 27 November 2000 The new Dutch National Supercomputer, a 1024 processor SGI 3000, has been inaugurated. The Netherlands National Computing Facilities Foundation, a foundation under the umbrella of the Dutch National Science foundation and responsible for the selection of the machine, also did celebrate its tenth anniversary.
When fully operational, the machine will have in excess of 1 Tflop/s of raw computing speed, brining it in
the upper regions of Europe's fastest machines, and give it a place around 25 of the TOP500 list of most
powerful computer systems in the world. The machine will be used for scientific, technical and medical research, including
climate research; computational medical science, water management and
water quality calculations; fluid
dynamics and turbulence modelling; and computational chemistry, including drug
design. The machine will have 10 Tbyte of on-line storage and 100 Tbyte of near-line tape-robot storage.
Most people think bone is dead material. In fact it is not, as Harry Weinans from the Erasmus University
in Rotterdam, explained at the NCF conference. There is a continues process of reparation and replacement
going on. Bone can get more strength when it is put under stress regularly.
Hormones and signal
molecules play an important role in the process. When people get older, the bone structure changes, and the repair process slows down. To analyse the bone structure and the processes taking place Weinans and his colleagues, developed programmes that need supercomputer
power to run fast enough. One of the models developed in Rotterdam shows what is happening when people get arthrose. Normally the bone has a kind of sponge structure. However, when the repair process is not functioning correctly anymore, the bone tries to keep its strength by filling up the holes keeping its strength under pressure, but make it vulnerable for breaking. Even with the powerful supercomputer models are used, it is still not possible to grasp details down to the micro-level. However, at a macro-level the models already provide a lot of insight.
Ad Emmen |
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