News for and about the Internet2 community

["Moore, Gregory A" <>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 28, 2006
Contact: Christine Fitzpatrick
Office of the Vice President for Information Technology

 
317-278-1818

Contact: Matt Link
University Information Technology Services

812-855-9255 

Open-source software powers top US academic supercomputer 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The newest edition of the 500 fastest supercomputers in 
the world, released today, lists Indiana University's supercomputer cluster, 
Big Red, as the fastest supercomputer among all US academic institutions and 
ranked 23rd overall in the world-and it runs on open-source software.

Big Red consists of IBM's very latest technology, an e1350 BladeCenter 
Cluster, that uses new chip technology and high speed internal networks to 
perform calculations at very fast speeds. Running the SLES 9 operating 
system, Big Red as of today is the largest IBM e1350 system in the world, 
with a peak theoretical capability of 20.4 trillion mathematical operations 
per second. It contains a total of 1024 dual-core IBM PowerPC 970 MP chips. 
Each chip has two floating point processor elements, one vector processor per 
chip, and runs at a clock rate of 2.5GHz. Big Red is made up of 512 JS21 
Blade servers, each of which contains two IBM dual-core PowerPC 970MP 
processors and 8GB of RAM. The JS21 Blade servers have Ethernet and 
Myrinet2000 interconnects.

Indiana University will be relying on a suite of open-source software to 
operate Big Red. Open-source software offers the best opportunity to achieve 
high levels of performance and to get this very new and innovative system up 
and running quickly so that it is producing new scientific breakthroughs as 
rapidly as possible.

One of the tremendous challenges in achieving high levels of performance from 
applications running on Big Red and other large supercomputers will be 
managing multiple layers of complexity and many processors in the system. In 
Big Red, each PowerPC 970 chip has two floating point units and a vector 
unit. Two dual-core PowerPC970 processors share 8GB of RAM on one JS21 Blade 
server and the 512 Blade servers in Big Red each have two different 
communication paths with other parts of the system-Myrinet2000 and Ethernet.

To achieve the greatest parallel processing efficiency, IU will be using the 
OpenMPI implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) specification. 
OpenMPI was created by an international consortium of several major research 
labs including the Open Systems Lab, part of Pervasive Technology Labs at 
Indiana University. OpenMPI provides especially advanced tools for taking 
advantage of and effectively utilizing a complex supercomputer cluster such 
as Big Red.

In addition, Indiana University will use the performance analysis tool Vampir 
NG, produced by the Technische Universität Dresden, to study and improve the 
performance of applications running on this system. Vampir NG uses the 
open-source Open Trace Format for storing data about application performance 
on this system. As supercomputers get faster and more complex, open-source 
software provides the capabilities and nimbleness required to extract the 
best possible application performance-and thus the most important scientific 
breakthroughs-from these massive new supercomputers.

Big Red will also play a major role in the TeraGrid, the National Science 
Foundation's flagship effort to create an advanced national 
cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure refers to supercomputers, massive 
data storage systems, advanced instruments, and people all connected by high 
speed networks, enabling new possibilities in scientific research. The 
National Science Foundation's goal for the TeraGrid is to make US scientific 
research more productive and to enhance the international competitiveness of 
US scientists. Big Red will be connected to the TeraGrid this summer, and 
will at that time be the fastest supercomputer connected to this innovative 
national grid computing system.

Indiana University is in the process of expanding its activities related to 
high performance computing, and as a result has leadership openings 
available. A search is underway for two leaders at the Director level. 
Consideration of applications for these positions will begin July 10. For 
additional details, see:

http://www.indiana.edu/~uitshr/services/jobs/RACAppDir30061.html 
http://www.indiana.edu/~uitshr/services/jobs/DirectorRACSys_10419.html

About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and 
also one of the largest universities in the United States with more than 
110,000 students, faculty, and staff on eight campuses. IU has a national 
reputation in the areas of information technology and advanced networking. 
For more information see http://www.iu.edu/. To read more about why Indiana 
University is red hot, see http://redhot.iu.edu/.

About Pervasive Technology Labs
Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University pursues research in the 
pervasive computing technologies that will help drive the 21st century 
information economy. Funded by a $30 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, 
Pervasive Technology Labs serves as an economic development catalyst for 
Indiana's information technology sector by commercializing research through 
technology transfer, commercialization of innovations produced in the labs, 
and joint research and development partnerships with industry. For more 
information, see http://www.ptl.iu.edu/.

About University Information Technology Services 
University Information Technology Services (UITS) at Indiana University, with 
offices on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses, develops and maintains 
a modern information technology environment throughout the university in 
support of IU's vision for excellence in research, teaching, outreach, and 
lifelong learning. UITS provides tools and services to support the academic 
and administrative work of the university, including supercomputers for data 
analysis and visualization. For more information, see http://uits.iu.edu/.

Editors: More information about IU's advanced cyberinfrastructure is 
available at http://rac.uits.indiana.edu/spotlight.shtml and at 
http://rac.uits.iu.edu/. A general news release about Big Red is available at 
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/3660.html.

This news release is online at http://uitspress.iu.edu/062806_sctech.html

###


Thanks,
Greg
---------------------
Gregory A. Moore
Senior Communications Specialist
Communications and Planning Office
University Information Technology Services
Indiana University
--------------------- 
IT News in Focus at it.iu.edu