NCSA Purchases SGI Altix System
released 07.13.04
Contact
Trish Barker
NCSA Public Information Specialist
tlbarker@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217.265.8013
Center expands its high-performance computing environment more than 20 percent
CHAMPAIGN, IL —
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) today announced the purchase through James River Technical of a Silicon Graphics shared-memory, symmetric multi-processor (SMP) computing system and storage technology. The SGI® Altix® system, to be named Cobalt, will consist of 1,024 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors running the Linux® operating system, 3 terabytes of globally accessible memory, and 370 terabytes of SGI® InfiniteStorage that will serve as the Center's shared file system, accessible by other high-performance computing resources within NCSA.
With a peak performance of more than 6 teraflops, Cobalt will bring the total computing power at NCSA to over 35 teraflops and the disk storage to three-quarters of a petabyte. The SGI system will open new research frontiers for scientists in a wide range of disciplines, including cosmologists who will be able to undertake large-scale simulations of the evolution of the universe, while atmospheric scientists access the system for on-demand data analysis in response to severe weather.
"The SGI Altix system will offer researchers a unique configuration that is not currently part of the cyberinfrastructure available to academic researchers," says NCSA interim director Rob Pennington. "This system will make it possible to handle very large computational applications, create and retain large datasets and databases in memory, and enable real-time, interactive data analysis."
NCSA will also make access to the SGI SMP system available through the TeraGrid/Extensible Terascale Facility cyberinfrastructure.
The SGI Altix system will diversify NCSA's current high-performance computing environment (Tungsten, Mercury, Copper, Titan, and Platinum) by providing an SMP environment with large shared memory pool and advanced I/O capabilities. The system will also be equipped with Altair PBS Pro job-management and queuing software and the SGI® InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS™ and with a 370 terabyte SGI® InfiniteStorage TP9500 disk array. SGI will provide a common scheduling and storage environment between disparate system resources within NCSA's computing environment.
"Researchers will no longer need to spend time ensuring that their challenges fit within the confines of a system's memory or capability," says Dave Parry, SGI senior vice president of the Servers and Platform Group. "Instead they will be challenged only by their efforts in creating new approaches to solving bigger problems."
"The Itanium 2-based Altix supercomputer is a powerful addition to NCSA's high performance computing center," said Jason Waxman, director of marketing for Intel's Enterprise Product Group. "The processing power of the Itanium 2-based system will give researchers the ability to see and analyze the universe in ways that were not even possible a few years ago."
The initial components of the SGI system have already been delivered to NCSA and are scheduled to be fully installed by the end of 2004. The target date for the system to be fully available to scientific users is March 1, 2005.
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
Silicon Graphics, SGI, Altix, XFS, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and CXFS and The Source of Innovation and Discovery are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
