Höchstleistungsrechen in Germany Part 5: Local Centres, Political issues with the Wissenschaftsrat and the DFGMunich 07 April 2003 In this last part some Hochleistungsrechenzentren like Aaachen, Berlin and Hannover will be discussed shortly. The political importance of the Wissenschaftsrat and the Commission for Computers of the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) will be highlighted. Additionally some new proposals of the Wissenschaftsrat of the future supercomputer scene will be mentioned.
RWTH AachenAs one of the leading technical universities in Europe, RWTH Aachen (Technical University) has been selected as the Sun Center of Excellence for Computational Fluid Dynamics. This provides Aachen with exposure as an institution that is advanced in its use of technology, and expands future partnership opportunities with Sun's Global Education and Research group.It installed three Sun complexes, a cluster of Sun Fire 15K with 288 processors, rank 173 in the Top500, Rmax 357 GigaFlop/s, peak performance 518 GigaFlop/s. The other two in the list consist of a Sun Fire15 cluster and a cluster Sun Fire15K/6800 15K with 144 processors, rank 454 and 455, Rmax 197 GigaFlop/s, peak performance 259 GigaFlop/s. In the second quarter of 2003, Sun extends the machines to an aggregated peak performance of 4 TeraFlop/s. This machine is the HPC system for the whole state of North-Rhine Westphalia.
Hochleistungsrechner Nord (HLRN)Six states in Northern Germany co-operate in the HPC field and installed together IBM Regattas at the locations Berlin, Konrad-Zuse-Centre for Informationstechnique, and Hannover at RRZN (Regional Computer Centre of Lower Saxony). After a long fight for these machines, they succeeded and in Spring 2002 installed 12 IBM Regatta p690 Turbo complexes in Berlin and in Hannover. This means 384 Power4 processors, 1.3 GHz, at each location. Now the machines rank 44 and 45 in the Top500 list with 1 TeraFlop/s Linpack and 2 TeraFlop/s peak performance.The distance between the sites is about 300 km. They are connected via a dedicated 2.4 Gbit/s link. In Q2 2003 they start larger projects at HLRN. There was an extreme request for compute power. It is greater than 300% of the available resources.
The Wissenschaftsrat in GermanyThe Wissenschaftsrat is an advisory body to the Federal Government and the state (Länder) governments. Its function is to draw up recommendations on the development of higher education institutions, science and the research sector with regard to content and structure, as well as to the construction of new universities. These recommendations involve considerations concerning quantitative and financial effects and the implementation of such considerations; they must be in line with the requirements of social, cultural and economic life.The Wissenschaftsrat issues recommendations and prepares reports which primarily concern the two major fields of science policy, namely the scientific institutions (universities, higher technical colleges and extra-university research institutions), in particular their structure and performance, development and financing, and general questions relating to the system of higher education, selected structural aspects of research and teaching as well as management of specific fields and disciplines.
The Wissenschaftsrat and SupercomputingOn July 7, 1995, it published recommendations providing science and research with HPC capacity. It compared the situation in Germany with the international one and proposed to install very fast HPC capacity in two to four centres. This should occur in timely different steps. Following the progress in computer technology, a new investment should occur every two to three years. This strategy is demonstrated in the actual acquisition and installation of new systems.On January 22, 1999, it discussed the concepts of Leibnizrechenzentrum, Munich, and HLRN, Berlin and Hannover and voted for Bavaria. The next paper was published on May 12, 2000, recommendations for the future usage of Höchstleistungsrechnern. It formulated theses like:
Recommendations for the future up to 2006In May 2002 the Wissenschaftsrat presented new proposals, one was the already mentioned 15 TeraFlop/s system in Stuttgart, which should be installed in a new building in 2004. Another Höchstleistungsrechner is scheduled for the Leibnizrechenzentrum (HLRB) for 2005 with a peak performance of 40 TeraFlop/s, if the HPC co-ordination committee agrees. Then the HLRB would probably move from the centre of Munich to the new campus in Garching.Other information on the web site shows that the NIC/ZAM in Jülich will install the 5.8 TeraFlop/s machine in 2002, the next step could be a 10 TeraFlop/s in 2005. HLRN has an option to extend the machines. This is scheduled for 2005 too, to 3 to 5 TeraFlop/s.
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)DFG is internationally known as Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. There are, of course, translations such as "German Research Council/Society/Foundation", but we feel that "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" is a proper name, and proper names habitually resist translation. DFG is the central public funding organisation for academic research in Germany. DFG is thus comparable to a Research Council (in British and western European terminology) or a (national) Research Foundation (in American and far eastern terminology).The Commission for Computers discusses the basic questions of the dataprocessing supply of the universities. It prepares recommendations for the Wissenschaftsrat to the notifications of German States for computers within the financing method of HBFG (Hochschulbauförderungsgesetz, Universities building law). Actually the Commission consists of 11 members, who are elected for three years. This commission examines the applications of the computer centres. From my own experiences I know that sometimes the applicants are sent back to answer new questions of the commission.
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