This brand new magazine will be first released February 2012 and will be issued once a year. We accept articles describing research using HPC resources as well as contributions describing services and infrastructures available to the EPFL HPC community. We are open to contributions from EPFL and partner institutions. The target of this new publication are researchers, collaborators and HPC enthusiasts. Articles can be written in English or French, but a short abstract in both languages should be provided by the author.
Deadline for submitting articles: September 20th, 2011.
For organizational purposes, please contact zetta@epfl.ch if you would like to contribute an article.
If you are interested in receiving the electronic version, please send an email to
zetta-subscribe@listes.epfl.ch
If you wish to receive the printed version, please contact zetta@epfl.ch.
The president of ETH Zurich, Prof. Ralph Eichler invited last Wednesday, June 16 the Swiss parliamentarian to join over lunch to an introduction of ETH Zurcih activities in High Performance Computing. Prof. Thomas Schulthess presented the activities of CSCS and the different elements of the Swiss National Supercomputing strategy (HPCN). Dr. Peter Binder of MeteoSwiss explained why supercomputer are essential for meteorology (CSCS is running two supercomputers for MeteoSwiss for 72 hours weather forecasts). Dr. Alessandro Curioni of IBM Rüschlikon explained how fast HPC is developing and that it is essential to regularly invest in new HPC systems.
You may read a longer article (in German) on this common presentation on ETH Life »
Dr. Peter Binder of MeteoSwiss (next picture)
A short movie (in Italian, German and French) explaining the importance of HPC for science, industry and society has been especially been produced for this day.
ETH Globe – the quarterly magazine of ETH Zurich – is reporting about the computing of the future and HPC (No.4 / November 2009). Within a month both ETH Zurich (ETH Globe) and EPF Lausanne (Flash Informatique) report about HPC developments in Switzerland.
“High Performance Computing” systems and supercomputers (HPC) are now a key technology for advanced research and the innovativeness of a country. HPC allows a deeper understanding and new solution models for highly complex phenomena from environment, climate, energy, health, and economy. With the growing importance of supercomputers the demands placed on them are growing, too. The development following traditional ways will soon be reaching physical limits. The current edition of ETH Globe shows what supercomputers can do today, how they will become greener in the future, and how researchers from quantum and neuro-informatics sciences want to do everything differently.”
Here is a selection of the articles in ETH Globe:
Strategie – ETH-Präsident Ralph Eichler möchte Hochleistungsrechner grüner machen und mit Quanten nach der Zukunft greifen.
Nachhaltig zur Höchstform – Künftige Superrechner sollen immer mehr leisten und dabei Energie sparen. Herausforderungen und Lösungen aus Expertensicht.
Der Herr der Rechengiganten – Thomas Schulthess, Leiter des Schweizerischen Hochleistungsrechenzentrums CSCS, im Interview.
Das Kalkül mit den Zwitterteilchen – Mit vereinten Kräften ein Tor zur Zukunft öffnen: Wie sich ETH-Forscher dem Quantencomputer nähern.
Das Gehirn auf einem Chip – Evolution, Hirn und Schwarmverhalten: Forscher setzen auf die Natur als Vorbild für künftige Rechnergenerationen.
Direkt – Peter Waser, Microsoft Schweiz, und ETHAstrophysikerin Marcella Carollo: Wie ein Unternehmer und eine Wissenschaftlerin über das Computing der Zukunft denken.
A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Markus Eisenbach and with Prof. Thomas Schulthess was named winner Thursday of the 2009 ACM Gordon Bell Prize, which honors the world’s highest-performing scientific computing applications.
This is the second time in a row that the research team of Prof. Thomas Schulthess wins the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for supercomputing. The prize has been announced today, November 19 at the SC09 international supercomputing conference in Portland, Oregon.
The application developed by ORNL, Florida State University, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Swiss National Supercomputing Center achieved 1.84 thousand trillion calculations per second (1.84 petaflops) using an application that analyzes magnetic systems and, in particular, the effect of temperature on these systems.
The 34th TOP500 List has been released November 17th in Portland, Oregon at the SC09 Conference. Switzerland has been able to improve its general placement in the list of the most powerful supercomputer worldwide.
For the first time since ever Swizerland has been able to place five system in the list with the following LINPACK performance peak:
Swiss Scientific Computing Center (CSCS) 168,7 TFlops
ETH Zuerich 51,8 TFlops
University of Zuerich 49,5 TFlops
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 47,7 TFlops
Geophysics Company 28,9 TFlops
for a total of 346,8 TFlops. Compared to the number of inhabitants this places at the third position worldwide and as the first in Europe (numbers are Gigaflops pro inhabitant):
New Zealand 54
United States 53
Switzerland 44
Sweden 32
Germany 27
Austria 26
United Kingdom 25
Finland 19
France 18
The good placement of Switzerland is a first result of the additional awareness for HPC and the first results of the implementation of the national HPC strategy (HPCN). Even if the placement is very good we have not to forget that Switzerland has one of the highest density of researchers worldwide at that the country is higly depending on the results of research for its prosperity.
