EPFL inaugurated Swiss-T1 supercomputerLausanne 23 Aug 2000 The Federal Polytechnical Institute of Lausanne (EPFL) has awarded itself with a new parallel supercomputer. Inaugurated on Wednesday 23rd August, the Swiss-T1 presents the particularity to use standard components. The machine was developed by EPFL, in collaboration with the Compaq and Supercomputing Systems (SCS) companies.
The Swiss-T1 was reveiled before a large number of personalities from the academic, scientific and industrial world. The presentation was part of the IMACS 2000 Conference, which was organised this week in Lausanne by the EPFL.
The date was not chosen at random since the numerical simulation, one of the IMACS 2000 items, is one of the great users of supercomputing as provided by the Swiss-T1.
The Swiss-T1 supercomuter has been developed in the framework of the collaboration, started in 1998 between the EPFL and Digital Equipment International, since then re-acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. The parallel supercomputer is composed of 70 Compaq Alpha processors, each performing about 1 Gflop/s. This performance puts the Swiss-T1 on the same level as the NEC supercomputer of the Swiss Centre of Scientific calculation in Manno (TI).
Delivered by Compaq, the components communicate using the standard language MPI (Message Passing Interface). The particular implementation of MPI, performed by the Supercomputing Systems AG company in Zurich forms one of the keys in the excellent performances of the Swiss-T1.
As the first representant of a new generation of parallel machines, the Swiss-T1 is ready for commercialisation. Thanks to the use of standard components, the supercomputer offers a remarkable performance/price relationship.
You can find more information at http://capawww.epfl.ch.
Leslie Versweyveld |
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