Primeur Weekly

15 November 1999   EuroFlash    no. 385
USFlash    no. 505

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Primeur is the premier news service on HPCN and supercomputing in Europe. Primeur Weekly delivers the news each week in your e-mail box. Check out the Primeur 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.

This week's headlines:

  • World`s Fastest System and Storage Area Network Demonstrated for Japanese High Performance Computing Community
  • Workshop on Visualisation in December
  • SEPtools workshop and web site
  • Portugal Telecom Signs Information Technology Services Agreement with Case, CGI and IBM
  • Khoros expands cross platform support to include HP-UX


  • Sun introduced new Trusted Solaris 7 version
  • Sun Targets high-performance computing with multiprocessor graphic workstation
  • NEC SX-5 parallel vector processor begins operation at Toyota
  • NEC SX-5 first to sustain over 1 Gflop/s on Focus
  • IBM forms large protein folding team
  • Exa Uses GTE Internetworking and SGI to Launch First Engineering ASP for CFD
  • Compaq enhances Alpha servers and announced Enterprise Toolkit Version 2.0
  • Adaptec`s Ultra160 SCSI Technology Selected for NEC Servers; Ultra160 Momentum Continues with Latest Adoption of Adaptec`s Technology
    •  
  • SGI/Cray no longere dominates the TOP500 - IBM in the lead
  • New gridware aims at resource management for clusters and the grid
  • HLRS steps forward in Metacomputing
  • European Networking live at SC99 via transatlantic connection
    • job advertisement

    The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) invites applications for a
    Professor of Computational Science
    and
    Director of the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing CSCS

    in Manno TI. The Director’s duties will include managing CSCS and projects of the Swiss universities requiring high performance computing resources and expertise as well as research, teaching and services in collaboration with universities and industry in Switzerland and abroad.

    CSCS is the national center for scientific computing, serving all universities in Switzerland. As a result of the present reorientation the center will increase its activities in the areas of research and teaching. CSCS is part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, and is situated close to Lugano in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.

    Applications are solicited from candidates with excellent scientific records as well as internationally recognised research and teaching activities in one of the central fields of application of supercomputing such as computational chemistry, biology, physics, fluid dynamics or climate modelling. The successful candidate will have exceptional management skills and experience with high performance computing systems. An excellent command of the English language is essential, Italian and German would be an asset.

    Please submit your application, curriculum vitae, list of publications and a table of completed projects to the President of ETH Zurich, Prof. Dr. O. Kübler, ETH Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich, no later than December 31, 1999.

    The leads of the news articles:

    Khoros expands cross platform support to include HP-UX

    full article Khoral Research announced extended platform support for Khoros Pro 2001. With the addition of Hewlett Packard's HP-UX, Khoros Pro 2001 now offers an enterprise- wide software development solution that includes native compiler and gcc interoperability. In addition to the HP-UX platform, Khoros Pro 2001 also supports SUN Solaris, SGI IRIX, Digital Unix, and Linux operating systems. Khoral created an integrated portability infrastructure that provides smooth scalability and portability from desktop PCs to clustered workstations to supercomputers (HPCs).

     

    Portugal Telecom Signs Information Technology Services Agreement with Case, CGI and IBM

    full article Portugal Telecom, IBM, CGI and Case agreed creating a systems and information technology partnership worth US$1 billion over 10 years. The largest such contract ever signed in Portugal.

     

    SEPtools workshop and web site

    full article The SEPtools consortium holds the next workshop on Wednesday 15 December 1999 (corrected date) at the NEC CCRLE offices in Sankt Augustin. The consortium has also opened a web site. SEPtools provides an integrated software paltform to users of parallel programmes. It includes Dimenas, Vampir and CAPtools.

     

    Workshop on Visualisation in December

    full article The Dutch Platform HPCN will organise a workshop on Visualsation, especially aimed at applications in design, construction and planning, in The Hague the Netherlands. There will be general lectures on visualisation, and presentations from a number of Dutch HPCN projects, including CAT, VR-on-demand, and VR-Stage.

     

    World`s Fastest System and Storage Area Network Demonstrated for Japanese High Performance Computing Community

    full article GENROCO provided the key components for a demonstration of the world's fastest Storage Area Network (SAN) at a colloquium held in Japan last week. Representatives from Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi, IBM, Compaq, SGI, and other major computer vendors attended the demonstration, which was the first of its kind held in Asia. GENROCO lead a similar industry event at CERN, the European Center for High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland, a few days earlier.

     

    European Networking live at SC99 via transatlantic connection

    full article The High Performance Computing Centre Stuttgart (HLRS) in Germany will demonstrate distributed computing and collaborative working between different European High Performance Computing Centres and the European Networking Demonstrations booth at Supercomputing '99. The world's largest conference on High Performance Networking and Computing is currently held in Portland/Oregon .

     

    HLRS steps forward in Metacomputing

    full article The High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) in Stuttgart/Germany together with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) in Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) in Tsukuba/Japan and Manchester Computing Centre (MCC) in Manchester/UK have announced the next step forward in metacomputing. Based on the communication software PACX-MPI developed by HLRS and the distributed visualization tool COVISE developed jointly by HLRS and Vircinity, the partners will couple their high end systems into one single resource during Supercomputing '99 at Portland/Oregon. The evolving metacomputer will consist of two Cray T3E-900/512 one Cray T3E-1200/512 and an SR8000/64. Together these machines will provide a peak performance of 2.2 Tflop/s.

     

    New gridware aims at resource management for clusters and the grid

    full article Genias Software GmbH, the leading European supplier of computing resource management software, and Chord Systems, Inc, the leading US Value Added Reseller of computing resource management software, will announce their merger next week at SuperComputing99 in Portland, Oregon. The new company will be based in San Jose, CA, and will operate under the Gridware, Inc. name.

     

    SGI/Cray no longer dominates the TOP500 - IBM in the lead

    full article In the November 1999 release of the TOP500, the ASCI red machine at Sandia is still number one: Intel has replaced a number of processors with newer models, which was enough to keep the first place. No other Intel machine is in or near the TOP500. The IBM powered ASCI Blue-Pacific can be found on the second place. IBM has overtaken SGI/Cray with 141 machines in the list. SGI/Cray is second with 133.

     

    Adaptec`s Ultra160 SCSI Technology Selected for NEC Servers; Ultra160 Momentum Continues with Latest Adoption of Adaptec`s Technology

    full article Adaptec announced that its Ultra160 SCSI technology has been selected by NEC Corporation for use in NEC's latest generation of servers. Adaptec's Ultra160 designs deliver 160MB/sec. performance per channel and are well suited for the needs of all classes of servers, as well as workstations and high-end desktops. NEC is the first Japanese company to incorporate Adaptec's Ultra160 SCSI technology within its server line and is also the latest in a series of Adaptec Ultra160 design wins with leading OEMs.

     

    Compaq enhances Alpha servers and announced Enterprise Toolkit Version 2.0

    full article Version 2.0 of the Compaq Enterprise Toolkit - Unix Edition (Enterprise Toolkit) is now available, offering a range of new features. More importantly, Compaq announces major performance enhancements for AlphaServer GS Series systems. On the Compaq AlphaServer GS140 an GS60E system, the Alpha EV6 processor speed increased from 525 MHz to 700 MHz.On applications Compaq reports 30 to 40% application performance gain.

     

    Exa Uses GTE Internetworking and SGI to Launch First Engineering ASP for CFD

    full article Exa working with GTE Internetworking (GTEI) and SGI, announces the creation of e-CFD, the first Internet-based service for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This new application service provider (ASP) venture offers engineers worldwide a secure virtual million-dollar system loaded with Exa's PowerFLOW software to perform CFD simulations.

     

    IBM forms large protein folding team

    full article IBM has formed what is probably the largest protein folding project teams ever assembled, to study how proteins fold. This will determine how polymers chains of amino acid residues, freshly made by genes, fold up to achieve their three dimensional structure as protein molecules, and then perform their activities as instructed by the genes.

     

    NEC SX-5 first to sustain over 1 Gflop/s on Focus

    full article Paradigm Geophysical Ltd. and NEC Corporation announced the immediate availability of the popular FOCUS (V4.3) Seismic Processing System for NEC SX-4 and SX-5 Series supercomputers. NEC SX-5 demonstrated excellent job throughput on a standard performance test used by Paradigm. The test consists of a series of compute and I/O modules used extensively by the seismic industry. It is designed to provide a realistic processing model typical of key day-to-day seismic analysis. The sustained performance on this historical test exceeded 1 Gflop/s on a single SX-5 processor.

     

    NEC SX-5 parallel vector processor begins operation at Toyota

    full article Toyota Auto Body Co., a manufacturer of auto bodies and parts for the Toyota group has inaugurated the operation of their new SX-5S/2 parallel vector supercomputer.

     

    Sun Targets high-performance computing with multiprocessor graphic workstation

    full article Sun Microsystems announced a new premier multiprocessor capable workstation. The Ultra 80 workstation, which can be configured with up to four processors and 4 Gbyte of memory, runs advanced graphics applications and larger datasets. Technical computing users in the EDA, earth sciences, satellite imagery, MCAD and financial services industries are target users of this system.

     

    Sun introduced new Trusted Solaris 7 version

    full article Sun Microsystems announced the availability of the Trusted Solaris 7 Operating Environment, an enhanced version of Sun's scalable Solaris 7 Operating Environment that incorporates heightened security features for commercial and government applications. Trusted Solaris 7, the follow-on to the Trusted Solaris 2.5.1 environment, delivers 64-bit capabilities and supports the full line of SPARC and Intel architectures, including the Sun Enterprise 10000 server, providing enhanced performance, capacity and scalability.

     

    Primeur Weekly is published per e-mail. Check out the subscription information for more details how to subscribe. You can find the back issues on the Primeur web site. The EuroFlash! and USflash! are published together with ESIS - European Supercomputing Information Service.

    © 1999, Genias Benelux

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