HPC NEWS
PRACE selects 22 applications for final benchmarking
PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, has selected 22 applications for the final PRACE application benchmark suite. The benchmark suite covers application areas from the PRACE Research Infrastructure’s future user base, ranging from particle physics through computational chemistry and fluid dynamics to earth sciences and astronomy. The selected applications have enough scalability potential to run on petascale systems and beyond.
PRACE investigated the actual usage of scientific applications in Europe, including their industrial usage, and the scalability
and performance of the applications were tested on the PRACE prototype Tier-0 platforms.
The PRACE benchmark suite was prepared in such a way that it offers high flexibility. This includes the possibility to use a subset of the full benchmark suite for procurement of specific Tier-0 architectures. Ease-of- use of the benchmark suite is assured by its integration into the flexible JUBE (Jülich Benchmark Environment) framework, which includes verification procedures. l DEISA, the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications, and PRACE, the Partnership
for Advanced Computing in Europe, have organised the DEISA PRACE Symposium 2010. This symposium will take place from 10-12 May and be hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) at the Casa Milà. The theme of the symposium is ‘Advancements in Petaflop Computing’. The second day focuses on challenges in computational science. DEISA and PRACE will provide updates on Extreme Computing in Europe, HPC architectures, applications, and training. In three Extreme Computing sessions, challenging
computational science projects from all over Europe will be presented.
Coventry University implements virtualisation
ScaleMP, a provider of
virtualisation solutions for high- end computing has announced that Coventry University, UK, has implemented the vSMP Foundation for SMP software in the Automotive Engineering Applied Research Group. To keep up with the
increased demand from faculty and students in the Automotive
News in brief
l SGI has announced that the
London-based Institute of Cancer
Research (ICR), Europe’s leading cancer research centre, has selected SGI Altix UV to support its
future life-saving research.
l The Arts University College
at Bournemouth, UK, has successfully implemented an Isilon IQ solution to meet high- intensity rendering and editing requirements and prepare for its
transition to a high definition digital
film environment. l Tech-X has signed a reseller agreement with Bright-Tech
Information Technology to
represent sales of its Vorpal product in China. The company has also opened subsidiaries in
Switzerland and the UK. l NEC’s High Performance Computing Group (HPCE) is being
helped by Promise Technology’s
RAID systems to supplement its parallel file system, LXFS. Initial installations have already been deployed in universities, a science centre and an automotive R&D
department. l Russian supercomputer vendor T-Platforms has signed a partnership agreement with Kazakh system integrator SmartCom to supply HPC solutions to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Engineering Applied Research Group, Coventry’s computation centre began looking to upgrade its HPC infrastructure. As part of this initiative, the computation centre decided to add additional symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) capability for running large simulations requiring large memory in addition to running
IDC to carry out HPC study for European Commission
distributed (MPI-parallel) applications. While Coventry University wanted to move to an x86 architecture-based infrastructure to lower hardware costs, it seemed impossible to avoid having to invest in separate cluster infrastructure as well as in an SMP system to address its computing requirements.
Global market intelligence firm IDC, working alongside supercomputing experts from Teratec, France, Daresbury Laboratory, UK, Leibniz- Rechenzentrum, Germany, and Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, has been awarded a contract by the European Commission to develop a strategic agenda for high performance computing (HPC) in Europe. The study will provide research and analysis needed to increase HPC capabilities available for the advancement of open science and to increase the competitiveness of the European Union in the supply and use of HPC systems. The study has a mandate to look at the key strategic developments in HPC through to 2020, as well as examining the investments, structures, and coordination needed to develop supercomputing e-infrastructures across Europe. Commenting on the study’s
purpose and scope, Chris Ingle, associate vice president of Consulting at IDC, said: ‘This is a critical moment for high performance computing leadership. Europe has been a leader in this field in the past and, with the right investments, can continue to benefit from the use of HPC in science and throughout society.’ The study is scheduled to be
a seven-month contract, which will provide policymakers with an analysis of the HPC industry from 2010-2020, a view on the technology requirements from the HPC industry in 2020, and a strategic agenda for HPC in Europe. Developing a view of the technologies that are needed for a successful HPC strategy is critical to the project.
www.scientific-computing.com
SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD APRIL/MAY 2010
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