INDUSTRY

HP today announced that Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has octupled the processing capacity of its HP Cluster Platform supercomputer to advance its scientists’ research in micro and nanotechnology, grid computing, material and energy technology. KIT has added 15.6 teraflops (15.6 billion floating point operations per second) to its previous high-performance computing (HPC) processing capacity of 2 teraflops, making it No. 50 among the world’s top 500 supercomputer sites (www.top500.org). The expanded HP supercomputer system is a core element of the institute’s new Steinbuch Centre for Computing, which provides HPC capabilities for the Karlsruhe Research Centre and the University of Karlsruhe to collaborate closely on science and commercial enterprises. The Steinbuch Centre for Computing operates the new 15.6 teraflop HP Cluster Platform 4000 (CP4000), which complements the older 2 teraflop Intel Itanium-based HP Cluster Platform 6000 system. Both systems are running HP’s Linux-based XC Cluster software environment and are available for other state universities and private enterprises that require additional computing power resources. The CP4000’s 750 new computing nodes are based on HP ProLiant servers powered by two AMD Opteron dual-core processors each. The system has more than 12 terabytes of memory and accesses 56 terabytes of storage using the Lustre-based HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share (SFS) high-performance parallel file system. The use of the HP Modular Cooling System, a water cooling system with a cooling capacity of 30 kilowatts per rack, facilitates high-power density in the expanded configuration. In addition, KIT operates two HP Scalable Visualization Array systems that integrate with the HP SFS file system and XC Cluster management software to visualize and manipulate huge data sets in real time as an extension of computing and data management in the cluster. Strengthening the collaboration The new supercomputer system is the first phase of a plan to strengthen the collaboration between HP and KIT. Currently, both organizations are discussing joint research on the efficient use of new multi-core processor technologies. “Thanks to the expertise of its scientists and academics, as well as the outstanding technical opportunities, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is an internationally important research center,” said Jörg Menno Harms, chairman of the supervisory board, HP Germany. “The HP supercomputing structures at KIT lay a strong foundation for the education of cooperative research groups from KIT and HP worldwide.” Joint research groups will be established as part of the already existing, co-founded High Performance Technical Computing Competence Centre (HPTC³). HPTC³ is involved in the development of software and visualization methods, as well as collaborative research projects in life sciences, the environment and grid computing. High-performance computing meeting planned at KIT KIT will host the eighth worldwide meeting of HP-CAST (HP Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical Computing) on May 6-9 at the Queens Hotel in Karlsruhe, Germany. At the event, HP’s HPC customers from around the world exchange ideas and experiences. More information about the meeting is available at its Web site. More information on high-performance computing from HP is available at its Web site.