September 8th, 2010
On September 2, 2010 the second cabinet of the Cray XE6 arrived and was installed at CSCS (see previous posting). Both cabinets are identical and will be interconnected to build a single large system.
Continuing the tradition of CSCS, the Cray XE6 has been given the name of a Swiss mountain, in this case Palu. The Piz Palü is a mountain in the Bernina Range in the Canton of Graubünden. There are three summits on its ridge, the highest being 3′901 m high.
We should note that this has been the first installation in the world of a Cray XE6. CSCS and selected users have already run first benchmarks on Palu and they have been very promising. Palu will subsequently be made available to all users starting this week.
The second cabinet of Palu has been financed by the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) and will be used in particular by researchers of the Insitute of Computational Science of Prof. Rolf Krause.
The next two photos show the arrival by truck of the cabinet at CSCS and the installation of the second door with a nice representation of the Piz Palü.
Tags: Cray, CSCS, Palu
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September 6th, 2010
On a six-day visit to Brazil with focus on science and health issues, Swiss Interior Minister Didier Burkhalter officially hand over the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, donated by Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), to Brazil’s education minister.
The supercomputer will be installed at the São Paulo University, Brazil’s largest university. The machine, which is the equivalent of a network of several thousand ordinary computers, is capable of performing 46 trillion operations per second.
The supercomputer will be installed at the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience, one of Brazil’s most innovative research institutes. The Blue Gene will be the first supercomputer in the southern hemisphere.
Link to Swissinfo: Burkhalter to hand over supercomputer in Brazil.
Link to the Western Swiss television channel TSR, Journal 19h30 (28 August) with a quotation of Patrick Aebischer: Le conseil federal Didier Burkhalter est en bresil pour developper la cooperation scientifique.
Tags: EPF Lausanne
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September 2nd, 2010
(Cross posting from ETH Life)
The Swiss platform for High-Performance and High-Productivity Computing (HP2C) is the world’s first and only project with the aim of developing optimized scientific simulations for high-performance computers. Seismologists from ETH Zurich are also involved, namely in the «Petaquake» project.
What is the exact structure of the Earth’s interior? What are the processes that take place there? Where and how do earthquakes originate? These are some of the central questions concerning our planet that we have not yet been able to answer with certainty. A view into the Earth’s interior similar to computed tomography for a human being could provide these answers, thus helping to improve seismic risk maps. This would be an important basis for assessing the risk of the locations of nuclear power plants or hospitals in Switzerland for example.
Rread the full article on ETH Life »
Tags: HP2C, Petaquake
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August 31st, 2010
On 30-31 August 2010 the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, LRZ) in Garching near Munich hosted the kick-off meeting of the First Implementation Phase Project of PRACE (PRACE-1IP). The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, PRACE (www.prace-project.eu), is a unique persistent pan-European Research Infrastructure for High Performance Computing. PRACE is a project funded in part by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme.
Thomas Eickermann of Jülich Supercomputing Centre welcoming the participants to the kick-off:
Switzerland is being represented in PRACE by CSCS who is contributing to the following working packages:
- WP2 Evolution of the Research Infrastructure
- WP3 Dissemination and Training
- WP8 Support for the procurement and commissioning of HPC services
- WP9 Future Technologies
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: CSCS, PRACE
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August 25th, 2010
The Faculty of Basic Sciences at EPFL is looking for a
HPC System Administrator
Immediate employment or by agreement.
This is a full-time position.
For additional information on the position, have a look at
http://www5.epfl.ch/emplois/page41531.html
Tags: EPF Lausanne, Job Opening
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