SGI announced that the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has added 54 new processor nodes supplied by SGI as part of an ongoing and significant upgrade to the high performance computing (HPC) system in place at the university. The upgrade features 864 cores powered by Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 series. Each node has 16 cores and 128GB memory to handle the increase in demand for data-intensive processing, and for processing that requires a larger memory instance. An SGI UV 10 with 32 cores and 1TB of memory will also be integrated into the upgrade.

QUT has recognised that (HPC) infrastructure is a critical tool to support leading edge research efforts. In recent years, QUT's computational processing requirements have been growing at the rate of 30% every six months and it was recognised that the current system would not meet demand during 2012. The SGI cluster will enable the university to continue its efforts in a number of research areas including Aviation and Airport environments, Biomedical Engineering, Smart Transport, Water and Environmental, Robotics, BioInformatics, Information Retrieval and Data Mining, Civil Engineering, Energy and Materials research. The goal of this initiative is to allow the university to sustain its distinguished track record in modelling, simulation and the analysis of critical problems faced by society.

"As a part of a longer-term plan, QUT is building a $230M Science and Engineering Centre (SEC) which will open in 2012 and house 500 academic staff and students," said Chris Bridge, director of Information Technology Services at QUT. "It will address crucial community infrastructure development issues lying at the intersections of greenhouse emissions, energy consumption, land use, construction technologies and materials research. The crucial building blocks underpinning the SEC research program are mathematics, computation, simulation and e-research where increasingly complex computational challenges need to be addressed. These new developments, along with QUT's expanding research profile, were the driving force behind this HPC upgrade."

QUT is a member of the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF) which is a consortium of universities in Queensland. QCIF is funded by the universities and grants from the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments. It supports high performance research infrastructure for its partner universities and QCIF provided funding assistance to QUT for this acquisition.

"SGI values our long standing relationship with QUT," said Nick Gorga, general manager, SGI Australia and New Zealand. "QUT continues to use SGI HPC systems and research data infrastructure to provide its research users with up-to-date tools to enable breakthrough research, and we are proud of our track record of providing quality support and integrated solutions that are valued and appreciated by the research community at QUT."