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Archive for February, 2010

A New Home for Palu: The ENTER Museum for Computer

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

In a previous blog entry we reported about the Cray  XT3, Palu, being decommissioned at CSCS. In the meantime we were able to give a new home to the  three of the six computing racks at ENTER, the Museum for Computer and Technology close  to Solothurn.

Das ENTER ist das einzige Museum in der Schweiz, welches sich der gesamten Breite der Computer, Computerperipherie und Technik widmet. Vermutlich weltweit einzigartig ist die Anzahl noch funktionierender Computersysteme. Nebst den ca. 400 Computern werden auch 100 Taschenrechner, ca. 50 mechanische Rechenmaschinen, Telekommunikation vom Telegrafen, Zentralen über die Telefonie bis zum modernen Handy, Röhrenradios, Röhrenfernsehgeräte, Chiffriermaschinen und vieles andere gezeigt.

It is a good feeling to know that computing systems running once at CSCS can be viewed by the generations of people. The Cray XT3 was an important step for CSCS being the first massively parallel MIMD supercomputer used at CSCS. Palu was used both by researchers of Swiss universities and by MeteoSwiss for weather forecasts.

In the next photos you may see some steps of the shipping of the three racks (each with a weight of about 830 kg). In addition a SGI Origin 9500 has also been donated to the museum.

The first Cray XT3 rack exits the CSCS building:

The rack being loaded on the truck for transport:

The console of the Cray XT3 and an additional rack are loaded in the computer room for transport.

Farewell of the Cray by the director of CSCS, Prof. Thomas Schulthess

Call for Papers: The 2010 High Performance Computing & Simulation Conference

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The following call for papers for the 2010 High Performance Computing & Simulation Conference in Caen, Normandy could be of interest for the members of our community.

HPCS

Call for Participation

The 2010 High Performance Computing & Simulation Conference (HPCS 2010)

In Conjunction With The International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2010)

Caen, Normandy, France

June 28 – July 2, 2010

http://cisedu.us/cis/hpcs/10/main/callForPapers.jsp

(Paper Submission Deadline: February 15, 2010)

You are cordially invited to participate in this conference through paper submission, a workshop or a special session organization, a tutorial, an invited speech, a demo, a poster, an exhibit, a panel discussion, a doctoral dissertation, whichever sounds more appropriate and convenient to you.

The conference will include invited presentations by experts from academia, industry, and government as well as contributed paper presentations describing original work on the current state of research in high performance and large scale computing systems, their use in modeling and simulation, their design, performance and use, and their applications.

There will also be tutorial sessions, workshops, special sessions, demos, posters, panel discussions, doctoral consortium, and exhibits.    Conference sponsorships are welcomed.

Workshops: (may have different deadlines)

  • W1:  Workshop on Dependable Multi-Core Computing (DMCC 2010)
  • W2:  1st International Workshop on Cloud Computing Interoperability and Services (InterCloud 2010)
  • W3:  Workshop on Optimization Issues in Grid and Parallel Computing Environments (OPTIM 2010)
  • W4:  Workshop on High Performance Interconnection Networks (HPIN?10)
  • W5:  Workshop on Security and High Performance Computing Systems (SHPCS 2010)
  • W6:  Workshop on Parallel Satisfiability Solving: SAT and beyond SAT, Parallel Solving on New Architectures (WPSS 2010)
  • W7:  Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Peer-to-Peer Architectures and Systems (MOSPAS 2010)
  • W8:  Workshop on High Performance Platform Management (HPPM 2010)
  • W9:  Workshop on High-Performance Distributed Computing for Financial Applications (HPDFA 2010)
  • W10: Workshop on Pattern Analysis and Recognition (PAR?2010)
  • W11: Exploitation of Hardware Accelerators  (WEHA 2010)
  • W12: Parallel Evolutionary Computation (PEC 2010)
  • W13: Sensor Networks Theory and Applications for Environmental Issues (SeNTApE’2010)
  • W14: Workshop on Autonomic and High Performance Computing (AHPC 2010)

Special Sessions: (may have different deadlines)

  • SS1:  Special Session on Trusted Ubiquitous Networks & Multimedia Contents Protection (TUN-MM 2010)
  • SS2:  Special Session on High Performance Parallel and Distributed Data Mining (HPPD-DM 2010)
  • SS3:  Special Session on Advances in Computational Methods in Electromagnetics (ACME10)
  • SS4:  Special Session on Cellular Automata, Algorithms and Architectures (CAAA 2009)
  • SS5:  Special Session on Embedded and Reconfigurable Computing (ERC 2010)

In addition to papers, we welcome proposals for  tutorials, demos, doctoral dissertation papers, panels or forums, posters, exhibits, sponsorships, industry track papers, etc.

Important Dates

  • Paper and Poster Submission Deadline, February 15, 2010
  • Symposium, Workshop/Special Session Proposal Deadline, November 30, 2009
  • Tutorial/Demo/Panel Proposal Deadline, February 15, 2010
  • Notification of Acceptance, March 15, 2010
  • Registration & Camera-Ready Manuscripts Due, April 15, 2010

For further details and updates, please consult the conference web site at URL: http://cisedu.us/cis/hpcs/10/main/callForPapers.jsp,  or contact one of the organizers.

Decommission of IBM P5 «Blanc» at CSCS

Monday, February 1st, 2010

On January 8th, 2010 the compute nodes of «Blanc» an IBM P5 have been switched off and on January 31st, 2010 the login nodes have also be switched off .

CSCS Blanc - IBM P5

CSCS Blanc - IBM P5

This computer has been named after Mont Blanc in the French-Italian Alps, elevation 4807 m and his last configuration has been the follow:

  • 48 nodes with 16 IBM Power 5
  • 1780 GB DDR II Ram
  • 40 TB Disk
  • 10 GBit IB interconnect

Blanc started its life as production system on January 24th, 2007. This computer was another first of its kind. It was the first supercomputer based on Power 5 processors that runs Linux operating system using Infiniband as high-speed interconnect. This computer was another first of its kind. It was the first supercomputer based on Power 5 processors which run a Linux Operating System using InfiniBand high-speed interconnect.

Blanc was mainly used for high-memory jobs and for problems with limited scalability due to the size of the studied systems and the properties of interest.

The next photo depicts the interconnect of Blanc being based on InfiniBand.

Blanc_IB

Compute nodes of Blanc.

Blanc_Node

Compute blade.