Primeur Weekly

27 August 2001

EuroFlash no. 472
USFlash no. 592


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Primeur-EnterTheGrid is the premier news service on HPCN, supercomputing and The Grid in Europe. Primeur Weekly delivers the news each week in your e-mail box. Check out http://EnterTheGrid.com for all information on The Grid. Check out the Primeur HPCN web site for the Calendar, the Analysis section with background on the TOP500, the Monthly en Live! special issues, information on HPCN centres and industry.

 
 
EuroFlash
 
 Durham University recreates the universe with Esteem supercomputer
 Overview of recent supercomputers report
 HFN workshop at CERN
 Compagnie Generale de Geophysique "CGG" installes Dell cluster
 
Focus
 
 The Top500 list - an analytical and critical view
 
USFlash
 
 Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator
 Indiana University brings ancient cities back to life
 Turbolinux EnFuzion 7.0 clustering software
 The 4th Workshop on Feedback-Directed and Dynamic Optimization 4th Workshop on Feedback-Directed and Dynamic Optimization
 Fakespace and University of Illinois to develop Digital Cave
 NSF Funds NCSA-led Virtual "Collaboratory" For Better Quakeproofing
 Oak Ridge National Laboratory and IBM to collaborate on next generation computers
 University of California researchers map key cellular structures with a new supercomputer adapted method
 Williams signs US$10 Million weather and climate research alliance with the University of Oklahoma
 
EuroFlash
 
 Durham University recreates the universe with Esteem supercomputer
Esteem Systems plc, has designed and installed a new IT system for Durham University's Physics Department that will enable the reconstruction of the universe. The machine will be used to extract data from billions of astronomical observations, and analyse how galaxies and solar systems have evolved. With the help of the 'supercomputer', which consists of a Sun Microsystems Sun Fire 6800 and a cluster of 64 Sun Microsystems Sun Blade 1000s, researchers at the University hope to be able to trace events right back to the Big Bang.
 Full article...

 

 Overview of recent supercomputers report
Aad van der Steen and Jack Dongarra published the eleventh edition of the report Overview of recent supercomputers in which they give an overview of parallel and vector systems that are commercially available or are expected to become available within a short time frame (typically a few months to half a year). They conclude that the number of systems that enter and leave the market are more or less in balance. There is one architecture emerging: Clusters of RISC based SMP nodes connected by a fast netwok.
 Full article...

 

 HFN workshop at CERN
Subjects for this year's HFN workshop on September 26 and 27 in Geneva are: are: High performance networking, the Grid project, Network Storage (SST, iSCSI, SAN's, etc), and cluster computing.
 Full article...

 

 Compagnie Generale de Geophysique "CGG" installes Dell cluster
Compagnie Generale de Geophysique ("CGG"), a supplier of services and products to the worldwide oil and gas industry, is upgrading its Houston processing center with 384 Dell servers running the Red Hat Linux operating system. The installation is part of a CGG initiative to increase its global computing power by more than 500 percent.
 Full article...

 

 
Focus
 
 The Top500 list - an analytical and critical view
Since 1973 the top team Jack Dongarra, Hans Meuer and Erich Strohmaier publish the top 500 list twice a year, the odd number in June at Meuer's Supercomputer Conference, now in Heidelberg located, and the even lists at the IEEE SC conference. In the beginning it was quite interesting to analyse the list. But during the years it developed a life of its own, driven by the "marketers" of the HPC vendors. This view highlights two sides, the political and the analytical aspects. It is a personal view and summarises some discussions and a talk given by me at the Hewlett-Packard HPC users group meeting in Barcelona last year.
 Full article...

 

 
USFlash
 
 Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator
The Austrialian governement will fund the Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator (ACESS) with a grant of AU$4.80 million. The Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator (ACESS) will consist of integrated software systems for multi-scale, multi-physics simulations and visualisation of earth systems combined with thematic parallel supercomputer hardware required for three-dimensional earth simulations. ACESS will be located at the University of Queensland, with nodes in Melbourne and Perth.
 Full article...

 

 Indiana University brings ancient cities back to life
Chichen Itza, Uxmal and other critically important and threatened archaeological sites in the world will come back to "life" in virtual reality thanks to Indiana University researchers in Indianapolis and Bloomington and IBM High Performance Storage System (HPSS) technology that is deployed over a wide area network.
 Full article...

 

 Turbolinux EnFuzion 7.0 clustering software
Turbolinux' new EnFuzion 7.0, is clustering technology that transforms a company's existing network of Linux, Unix, and Microsoft Windows servers or workstations into one supercomputer. environment.
 Full article...

 

 The 4th Workshop on Feedback-Directed and Dynamic Optimization 4th Workshop on Feedback-Directed and Dynamic Optimization
This workshop provides a forum for the burgeoning fields of feedback-directed and dynamic optimization. It will be held, Austin, Texas December 2, 2001. Submission deadline: October 12.
 Full article...

 

 Fakespace and University of Illinois to develop Digital Cave
Fakespace Systems offers a digital version of the CAVE, and an upgrade kit to enhance existing immersive room environments with digital projection technology. The digital CAVE provides extremely bright, colorful, sharp and stable imagery, significantly expanding its power and flexibility for engineers, designers and researchers using visualization for enhanced collaboration and better understanding of complex volumetric data.
 Full article...

 

 NSF Funds NCSA-led Virtual "Collaboratory" For Better Quakeproofing
A consortium of institutions led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will receive $10 million to build a national virtual engineering laboratory, or "collaboratory," for designing earthquake-safe structures. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the award, which is part of its George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) project. The integrated NEES network, called NEESgrid, will link earthquake engineering research sites across the country, provide data storage facilities and repositories, and offer remote access to the latest research tools.
 Full article...

 

 Oak Ridge National Laboratory and IBM to collaborate on next generation computers
IBM and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will collaborative. At the heart of the agreement is IBM's Blue Gene research project, which combines advanced protein science with IBM's next-generation cellular architecture supercomputer design.
 Full article...

 

 University of California researchers map key cellular structures with a new supercomputer adapted method
The maps may point the way to understanding how those structures perform functions such as transporting a drug like taxol to a binding site so it can do its work in treating breast cancer. The calculations were performed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UCSD on Blue Horizon, a large IBM SP supported by the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI).
 Full article...

 

 Williams signs US$10 Million weather and climate research alliance with the University of Oklahoma
A unit of Williams announced a $10 million strategic alliance with the University of Oklahoma (OU) to enhance weather and climate research, technology development, and undergraduate and graduate meteorology education. This commercial arrangement, the largest of its kind in the U.S. between a private corporation and a university meteorology program, is a mutually beneficial agreement that allows OU to expand its top-tier meteorology programs while Williams receives exclusive weather analysis and forecasting tools.
 Full article...

 

 

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© 2001, Genias Benelux

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