| News digest October 2005 |
|
Advertisement
|
 |
| |
| Industry
-
HPCN industry |
|
|
| SOS - An HPCC rescue pathway is found.... |
|
"I don't know where we are going, but we'll get there quicker if we get started". David Bernholdt-ORNL (SOS9, March 2005).
SOS is the recognised international distress call for help and very apt for 'capability' computing in the 1990s, especially in the USA. Come the new century, and with some help from new R&D funds for high productivity systems, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Cray are working hard to offer a rescue pathway! (Christopher Lazou)
Read further... |
|
|
|
| CAS2005 - Earth System Modelling, Katrina - A cautionary tail... |
|
Eighty meteorologists and HPC experts from 12 countries and 5 continents attended the bi-annual CAS2005 workshop on the use of HPC in meteorology, held at the idyllic Imperial Palace Hotel, Annecy, France, organised by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA. This excellent relatively small and friendly workshop provided a tour de force in meteorological and computing techniques by active practitioners striving to maximise the latest HPC technology to refine and improve their climate prediction models. It was augmented by talks from broader scientific centres of excellence like NERSC and ORNL from the USA and CCLRC from the UK, presenting the e-science programme. Most presenters came from sites in the USA with large IBM P3/4/5 systems, while the European contingent included a strong representation from sites with large NEC SX-6 and SX-8 systems. This article highlights a few of the many climate issues raised by presentations given at this workshop. (Chris Lazou)
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Research Center Jülich starts-up first Blue Gene Supercomputer to Germany |
|
The first IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer system in Germany is hosted in the Research Center Jülich. The supercomputer is currently being used by the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM). ZAM will perform research on the architecture of high performance computing systems with the supercomputer. With a peak performance of 5,6 Teraflops (5,6 billions of floating point operations per second) and a Linpack-Benchmark performance of 4,7 Teraflops the German Blue Gene system ranks at number 60 at the current TOP500 list of fastest global supercomputers.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Cray XD1 supercomputer delivers three times more power to reconfigurable computing applications |
|
Cray XD1 supercomputers will support the latest generation of Xilinx Virtex-4 field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), including the Virtex-4 LX and SX platform. The Cray XD1 system is designed to employ the Xilinx FPGAs as advanced co-processors that let users accelerate high-performance computing (HPC) applications involving compute-intensive operations, such as digital signal processing or searching and sorting routines.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Korea's Meteorological Research Institute selects Cray XD1 supercomputer to advance weather prediction |
|
The Meteorological Research Institute (METRI) of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has selected a Cray XD1 supercomputer with Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors to support its Forecast Research Laboratory in improving the accuracy of atmospheric analyses and weather predictions including challenging short-term predictions known as nowcasting. The Cray XD1 system will be a key component for researchers using the Forecaster's Analysis System (FAS), a numerical weather prediction system that requires the leading performance and scalability delivered by the Cray XD1 supercomputer.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Finnish Meteorological Institute selects SGI technology for national weather forecasting and international climate research |
|
The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has selected an SGI Altix high performance computer to deliver increasingly accurate land, high-altitude and marine weather predictions for Finland. At FMI, half of the new SGI Altix system will be dedicated to more highly defined climate modelling and research for national and international atmospheric efforts, especially for monitoring the greenhouse effect and global warming; the remaining half is designed to provide much more detailed and improved short-term weather forecasting from combined observational and satellite data.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Top Dutch ICT projects demonstrated to future users |
|
"The challenge consists in keeping connected the different social sectors with the recent ICT developments", stated Reinder van Duinen, president of the GigaPort steering group at the opening of the BSIK-ICT Congress 'Enlightening Science' in Amsterdam.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Field tests unite weather and climate models |
|
Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and several other government and academic institutions have created four new supercomputer simulations that for the first time combine their mathematical computer models of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice. These simulations are the first field tests of the new Earth System Modelling Framework (ESMF), an innovative software system that promises to improve and accelerate U.S. predictive capability ranging from short-term weather forecasts to century-long climate change projections.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Fujitsu Siemens Computers to introduce PRIMERGY servers based on AMD processors |
|
Fujitsu Siemens Computers will add AMD Opteron processors to its PRIMERGY server line. Products based on the AMD Opteron processor are expected to take advantage of the dual core processing technology which assembles two physical processor cores on one die, improving the server offering for the Dynamic Data Center focussing on improvement of efficiency, flexibility and availability in the data centre. The company expects to ship PRIMERGY based on AMD Opteron before the end of this calendar year. The PRIMERGY server line already offers 64-bit Intel 2-way and 4-way Xeon processor MP and Itanium 2 processor technology.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Cray and Celoxica make reconfigurable computing easier to program |
|
Cray Inc. is collaborating with Celoxica Ltd. to make Celoxica's DK Design Suite available to customers who want to use a software design flow to accelerate their applications using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) integrated into the Cray XD1 supercomputer. The DK Design Suite consists of C-based design and synthesis tools that allow software engineers skilled in high-level programming languages to implement FPGA-based algorithms using the familiar C language. Called reconfigurable computing, FPGA technology can dramatically increase the speed of engineering and scientific applications.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Egenera sign 240 million euro exclusive OEM strategic alliance in Europe, Middle East and Africa |
|
Fujitsu Siemens Computers has signed an exclusive OEM strategic alliance with Egenera Inc. to bring additional levels of flexibility and economic efficiency into the Dynamic Data Center. To enable customers to increase the efficient operation of IT, Fujitsu Siemens Computers will integrate the award-winning Egenera BladeFrame solution in its PRIMERGY server portfolio. This exclusive strategic alliance, worth 240 million euro over approximately three years, is effective immediately and is valid throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Fujitsu Siemens Computers will become the sole provider of PRIMERGY BladeFrame in EMEA and will start shipping product during the fourth calendar quarter of 2005 in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The products will be available in the first calendar quarter of 2006 in all other EMEA countries. In addition, the agreement also serves as a framework for future joint research and development collaboration, joint solution testing and Fujitsu Siemens Computers will have a seat on Egenera's technology advisory board.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| From shared to distributed memory systems for applications |
|
Shared-memory computing applications have never taken particularly well to operating on distributed-memory systems, at least until now. A possible solution has emerged, of interest to NASA and IBM, and is being tested on their distributed computing systems. Funded under the European Commission's IST programme, the POP project focused on generating an environment to allow applications designed using the OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) to operate on distributed-memory systems.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory speeds tests of virtually inexhaustible energy source with new Cray supercomputer |
|
Using a powerful new Cray XT3 supercomputer, the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has run the world's fastest, most-detailed simulation of waves used to control plasma - gaseous matter superheated enough to generate massive amounts of energy. The simulation is related to the multibillion-dollar ITER project, which aims to tame plasma so it can later become a virtually inexhaustible supply of electricity.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Fujitsu announces new ultra-high-end workstation with AMD Opteron processor and two PCI Express graphics interfaces |
|
Fujitsu Siemens Computers has launched its new ultra-high-end workstation CELSIUS V830. The dual-processor workstation is based on AMD64 technology and includes two PCI Express x16 interfaces supporting the full bandwidth of the latest graphical subsystems.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Fujitsu Siemens Computers to showcase at Storage Networking World Europe 2005 Expo |
|
Fujitsu Siemens Computers will present the highlights of its storage portfolio live and in action at this year's Storage Networking World (SNW) Europe trade fair, on September 6th and 7th at the Congress Center, Messe Frankfurt on the main trade fair grounds. The focus of this trade fair presentation will be the virtual tape appliance CentricStor and an expansion of the Fujitsu Siemens Computers' Dynamic Data Center concept for linking local branches: Dynamic IT for Branch Office Connection. This system allows companies with multiple subsidiaries to use one central back-up system for data from the all their offices, thus opening up a much more cost-effective and secure alternative to more conventional systems.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Quadrics provides QsNetII technology to the AMD developer centre |
|
Quadrics, an industry leader in high performance interconnect technology, has commissioned a development cluster based on its QsNetII interconnect and the AMD64 computing platform.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Cray and Mitrionics team to make high-performance computing available to a broader community of users |
|
Cray Inc. is working closely with Mitrionics Inc. of Lund, Sweden, to provide users of the award-winning Cray XD1 supercomputer with a fast and simple way to implement application-accelerating field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. Mitrionics' Mitrion Virtual Processor and Mitrion Software Development Kit make it possible for supercomputer users to program FPGAs integrated into the Cray XD1 system on a true software level, reducing the time and effort to take advantage of FPGA-based computation.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| ClearCube and United Devices create PC Blade Grid for hospitals and medical research |
|
ClearCube Technology and United Devices announced a collaboration that combines blade and Grid technologies to advance the security, speed and accuracy of modeling for medical researchers in the pharmaceutical market.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Spectra Logic Libraries earn IBM HPSS Certification for supercomputing sites |
|
Spectra Logic's T-series tape libraries have been certified as compatible with IBM High Performance Storage System (HPSS). The IBM software solution helps supercomputing customers better handle large capacity requirements, improve transfer rates across multiple servers, and classify data to be stored.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Sun sets new performance benchmark with SPARC server-Solaris Operating System (OS) combination |
|
Sun's Enterprise class UltraSPARC IV-based Sun Fire V890 system running the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and Sybase IQ has set a new benchmark world record. Sun demonstrates continued SPARC processor excellence and industry-leading performance and price/performance on the Sun Fire V890 server.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| IBM'S TotalStorage tape solution implemented at leading visual effects and animation house |
|
IBM has shipped its 500,000th IBM TotalStorage Linear Tape Open (LTO) drive solution, since the technology became available in mid-2000. The ultra-powerful IBM tape drive solution is one of the fastest-selling tape drive solutions in history.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| HP outgrows market and continues to rank no. 1 in worldwide total disk storage systems revenue |
|
HP outgrew the total disk storage market by 4 percentage points in the second quarter of 2005, according to market data released by IDC.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| SGI introduces reconfigurable computing technology |
|
Silicon Graphics has unveiled an advanced hardware solution based on SGI Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing (RASC) technology.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| AER and Cray offer advanced modelling capabilities XD1 |
|
Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., an expert in earth, atmosphere and space science R&D, and Cray Inc. are collaborating to offer a highly affordable solution that provides local forecast information for a variety of uses that is scalable, flexible, entirely customizable and delivered on the award-winning Cray XD1 supercomputer.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| IBM system z9 mainframe shipping to global customers on schedule |
|
IBM's new System z9 mainframe - the first of a new generation of mainframes designed to help facilitate management security and systems resources across a corporate IT network - began shipping to customers around the world on schedule.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| New IBM technology brings US Open tennis action to fans around world |
|
IBM is the exclusive technology partner for the USTA for the fourteenth consecutive year and will use breakthrough new technology to provide tennis enthusiasts a virtual "center court" experience at this year's 2005 US Open Tennis Championships in New York.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Sun dominates data warehousing on the UNIX platform |
|
Six of the world's top 10 data warehouses on the UNIX platform by both normalized data volume and number of rows/records run on Sun platforms, according to the Winter Corporation 2005 TopTen Programme. The largest in data volume manages 93.5 terabytes of data and the largest in number of rows/records manages 533.7 million.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Western Scientific and EqualLogic collaborate to provide complete high-performance computing solutions |
|
EqualLogic, a provider of complete, intelligent iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, has entered into a strategic partnership with Western Scientific. Western Scientific will integrate EqualLogic's PS Series platform into its broad range of high-performance computing and storage solutions.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| IBM announces latest platform management software, IBM Director 5.10 |
|
IBM has made available IBM Director 5.10, popular with customers thanks to its improved ease of use and open, integrated design. With Director 5.10, companies can more easily manage their complex IT environment and help lower costs through management efficiencies and increased system uptime.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Mellanox powers world-class sockets performance over 20Gb/s InfiniBand links |
|
Mellanox Technologies Ltd.'s Zero-Copy (ZCopy) Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) running over InfiniBand fabrics can generate double the data throughput between clustered server nodes, while reducing the overall CPU utilization by up to a factor of ten when compared to other solutions. Mellanox InfiniBand fabric products are the only low-latency, high-performance 20Gb/s interconnect solutions that offload transport processing in hardware.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Infrastructure software for MacOS X tiger |
|
TIBCO Software announced the immediate availability of its infrastructure software, including integrated enterprise backbone, business integration and business optimization software, for Apple's Mac OS X Server version 10.4 "Tiger." Now customers in the financial services, media, government and education sectors are able to protect their IT investments with increased flexibility and choice for deploying a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Read further... |
|
|
|
| |
| Industry
-
The Grid |
|
|
| Absoft announces software development kit solutions for IBM Grid and Grow including software products from Intel Corporation |
|
Absoft Corporation has launched a powerful new software developers kit designed to make it easier for companies of all sizes to build and deploy affordable and efficient Grid computing IT operations. Introduced at the inaugural GridWorld Conference in Boston, the Absoft High-Performance Computing Software Development Kit (HPC SDK) has been specifically designed to work with the recently announced IBM Grid and Grow hardware and services offering.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) grants 17 million euro to set up national D-Grid infrastructure |
|
BMBF will advance the development of new services for research and science in the framework of the e-Science initiative. Scientists will be able to process complex scientific problems independently from their location or the available facilities such as computers, programmes, data and information. in the first phase of the D-Grid deployment, the Ministry has made available 17 million euro. Grid computing allows the users to make available at their fingertips remote computing power, databases and scientific instruments. This can only be achieved when the codes are standardised in order to communicate with each other without any complications. At the basis, a special software is required, the so-called middleware.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| A Grid for biomedical applications: Medi-Grid |
|
The German Ministry of Education and Research - Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) - has awarded 17 million Euro for D-Grid. One of the projects is Medi-Grid. The project will be managed by TMF (Telematikplattform für medizinische Forschungsnetze) and will support medical researchers with Grid technology to improve collaboration amongst researchers.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch, D-Grid general co-ordinator, in interview with Primeur/EntertheGrid |
|
In Primeur/EntertheGrid's last week issue, the news about the German Ministry of Education and Research granting 17 million euro to set up the national D-Grid infrastructure was announced. Primeur/EntertheGrid had the opportunity to have an exclusive interview with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch, the general co-ordinator of D-Grid, to ask him about his views and plans for the D-Grid initiative.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Exploring space with the German Astronomy Community Grid (GACG) |
|
The German astronomy and astrophysics community is one of the most active communities worldwide with regard to the delivery of Grid-based e-Science solutions for collaborative scientific research. Astronomy institutes and academic institutions in Germany have co-operated since long to the development of Grid middleware and Grid applications, and the software components that have been generated are being used internationally. The German Astronomy Community Grid (GACG), a new initiative within D-Grid, is a consortium of major German astronomic research institutes, Grid-specified research groups specialised in informatics as well as a number of supercomputing centres.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| InGrid: Innovative Grid developments for scientific engineering applications |
|
The German D-Grid community project InGrid will create a Grid environment for scientific engineering applications. Through the flexible use of Grid technologies modelling, simulation and optimization expertise will be joined together as well as the common use of resources will be enabled. Five application areas including foundry, transformation, soil water streaming and transport, turbine simulation and interaction from fluid and structural mechanics, will be tackled in an exemplary way to cover the three central areas of compute-intensive scientific engineering applications which are multi-scale problems, combined multi-disciplinary problems and distributed simulation-based optimization. In particular, adaptive and scalable processing models and Grid-based environments will be created for these challenges.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Korean National Supercomputing Center deploys Force10 Terascale E-Series to build resilient international Grid network |
|
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), Korea's national supercomputer centre, has deployed the Force10 TeraScale E-Series in an international Grid network to connect the country with scientists and researchers worldwide via the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (GLORIAD). Leveraging the high density and resiliency of the TeraScale E600 at the core of its network, KISTI is building the foundation for Korea's next generation information infrastructure.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| C3 Grid - Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid |
|
Climate research is one of the strong scientific areas in Europe and Germany. It involves a lot of data acquisition, complex models and supercomputing number crunching capabilities. Hence it is a typical candidate for Grid computing. As part of the funding of the German D-Grid initiative awarded by the German Ministry BMBF, a project on "Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid" (C3 Grid) has been started. Analysis of the climate and the Earth system is complex, researchers, often from different institutes, have to work together, using combinations of resources. To support this process, they define work flows of analysis processes.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| CERN builds Europe's largest campus network with Force10 TeraScale E-Series |
|
CERN will deploy Force10's TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers as the foundation of its new 2.4 Terabit per second (Tbps) high performance Grid computing farm. The TeraScale E-Series will connect more than 8000 processors and storage devices and also provides the first intercontinental 10 Gigabit Ethernet WAN links in a production network. Leveraging the high density and resiliency of the TeraScale E-Series throughout its campus, CERN is building a reliable and scalable network that will serve the organisation's needs for the next several years.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Science on the Grid: UK e-Science projects deliver for science, industry and engineering |
|
Six major UK projects to ensure that new e-Science technologies meet the needs of real scientific users are now finishing. Their achievements include: the discovery of new genes; a quiet revolution in the way new drugs are discovered; the largest simulation of materials at the molecular level ever undertaken; the streamlining of a chemical service; an efficient way of pooling engineering design expertise; and the demonstration of new ways of keeping tabs on aircraft maintenance.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Canadians blaze new media trail in architectural design at iGrid 2005 |
|
Faster than a bolt of lightning. More powerful than anything Bill Gates has put together. Able to leap a continent in a split second: the dawn of a new era in architecture is taking flight. Two teams of Carleton University students, thousands of kilometers apart, will be linked via computer network "lightpaths" in a unique demonstration of the future of digital design in architecture as part of the global iGrid 2005 showcase. The students from the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) have been selected for an opening night presentation at iGrid 2005, one of the largest aggregations of computing and data transmission bandwidth ever assembled for research. One of roughly 50 demonstrations over the event's three days, the CIMS demonstration will showcase the commercial potential of architecture and high performance Grid computing.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| UK Supercomputer announced in Paris |
|
Dr. Steven Windmill, CEO of Omneta, has announced that Omneta is building a 120-Tflop/s supercomputer – one of the fastest computers on the planet. The Omneta supercomputer is to be powered by Xserve servers and Xserve RAID storage systems; directly connected by the high speed Interoute AG networ | | |
