CNRS will get the most powerful IBM Power4 supercomputer outside USAParis 06 February 2001 The French CNRS (National Scientific Research Agency) will equip its Institute for Scientific Computing Development and Resources (IDRIS) with IBM's new generation pSeries SP-system based on the Power4 processor before end of this year. IDRIS is one of two French national computing resources center for intensive high-performance computing. The new system delivers a peak performance of 1.3 Tflop/s with an aggregated global memory of nearly 900 Gbyte. This machine complements the cluster of 3 NEC SX-5 computers with a total of 40 processors and 224 GByte main memory.
This activity completes an ambitious plan to consolidate and reinforce France's national infrastructure for supporting scientific computing and digital modelling by means of a major upgrade in computing power on the Institute's site. As reported in last year's Primeur Live of Supercomputing 2000 in Mannheim, Victor Alessandrini presented the vector processing side. This development started last year with the installation of a NEC SX-5 high performance vectorial platform as a cluster solution. The elements are a NEC SX-5A 16 processors, 128 GByte memory (installed in November 1999), a NEC SX-5A 16 processors, 64 GByte memory (installed April 2000) and a NEC SX-5B 8 processors, 32 GByte memory (installed April 2000). The IXS interconnect network with 8 GByte/s bandwidth was installed in April 2000. The total disk space was in the order of 5 Tbyte. Victor Alessandrini mentioned that an upgrade of the Cray T3E scalar facility is currently under way. He said: "A new scalar architecture will be installed by ends of this year (2000), reaching teraflop peak performance by ends 2001." Now these words become concrete. The new IBM Power4 supercomputer delivers a nominal computing power of 1.3 Teraflops and offers a global memory of nearly 900 Gigabytes. IBM will deliver its new generation superscalar architecture before the end of this year. The new machine has been assembled at the IBM plant in Montpellier, France, and is the most powerful configuration ever installed by IBM outside the USA. It will comprise eight extremely powerful nodes, with 32 processors per node, and some 5 Gigaflops of peak performance per processor, each node having a large shared memory of between 64 and 256 Gigabytes. The new system implements a number of high-performance technologies including
high-integration processors (chips with 170 million transistors), high-density packaging, and a high-efficiency architecture and operating system. In the realm of scientific computing, these technologies enable high-yield utilisation of the machine's processing power. This new technology developed by IBM matches CNRS's current strategy for IDRIS's high-performance computing infrastructure of prioritising technologies based on the harmonious, consistent architectural integration of innovative processors, deploying highly reliable and robust cutting-edge technologies, and providing effective and dependable programming and production environments. IDRIS' implementation of a new generation of machines meets the growing need among laboratories for modelling, simulation and information processing. IDRIS is currently managing more than 500 scientific projects and providing services to more than 1800 users in France.
IDRIS has the same status as a national laboratory operating a large scientific instrument.
The direction works together with expert's committees in 9 scientific areas, to review project
proposals and decide about resource allocation. The 9 scientific areas are :
The first sector (environment and climate modelling) uses about 27 per cent of IDRIS computational resources, and about 80 per cent of its data management resources. IDRIS staff includes 45 computer scientists and 15 technicians. One of the most important teams is User Support, 18 engineers excellent experts in performance engineering. Some of them are steering new user projects in metacomputing and code coupling. The new IBM forms part of CNRS's ambitious project to develop a set of concentrated or distributed platforms that will deliver computing power for research, and speed up scientific discovery through the use of information and communication technologies. The CNRS procurement plan for high performance computing resources forms part of the policy developed at the Ministry of Research to equip researchers with the tools to meet today's research challenges in biotechnology, nanotechnology and hypercomplexity. The IBM server's can handle high volumes of data and will be a key tool for scientists and researchers. Through its knowledge and involvement in scientific computing, IBM will help IDRIS leverage this new technology to pave the way for new scientific discoveries. Together with CINES (The Higher Education Computing Center in Montpellier), IDRIS participates in setting up national computing resources for the extremely demanding requirements of the scientific and research community. For more information visit:
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