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RQCHP launches SGI supercomputer

February 15, 2007

The RQCHP organization (the Quebec Network for High-Performance Computing) just completed the new installation of a shared-memory supercomputer yesterday, a mainframe it called the most powerful of its kind in Canada, and which will be made available to scientists all over the country via the growing pan-Canadian high-performance computing network.

Overall, RQCHP's new supercomputer is based on SGI's (Silicon Graphics) Altix 4700, which RQCHP determined as having the most value, said the organization's University of Montreal director Michel Côté.

Coté said "the mainframes's memory can be accessed by all the CPUs.” He added "clustered supercomputers can only access their own memory and have to use a multiprocessor interface to communicate with each other, meaning that information can only be processed in small increments, said Côté.

“With shared-memory, scientific processes and problems can be cast in different ways that will benefit from the better architecture,” Coté added.

RQCHP's new supercomputer will include 384 dual-core Intel Itanium Two processors and 1536 GB of RAM, which can combine to pump out 4.9 teraflops.

Côté indicated that there are over one-hundred groups of scientists within RQCHP who are in line to use the supercomputer. Each of them will develop their own software to run their projects.

Overall, this multitude of programs should all run smoothly together, courtesy of the network-provided compilers such as Java, Fortran, and C said Coté. The groups will have an allocation of time per year. Their jobs will be submitted into a queuing system.

They already have quite a few ambitious supercomputing projects on the go, including heart simulations, complete with blood flow, nanotechnology experiments geared toward building a better superconductor, in-depth financial analysis and attempts at noise reduction in cars and airplanes.

Another project they have is mixing medicine components more efficiently.

SGI contributed $8 million toward the $11 million price-tag of the Altix 4700, while the remaining $3 million was split between federal and provincial governments.

Still, members of the RQCHP aren't the only scientists who will get to use the Altix 4700. The RQCHP is a member of the recently announced pan-Canadian high-performance computing network, tentatively named "Compute Canada", according to Côté.

The initiative will make it easier for those needing supercomputers for their research to tap into all the various high-performance computing networks across Canada.

Coté added “we are competitive among ourselves, but we're also collaborative.” “We want to be used by all scientists all over the country" he said.

Côté added that the next phase of the national network will see them get organized and begin to facilitate better sharing and availability of machines, a process that is already underway, according to Rob Simmonds, the CTO of WestGrid, the Alberta-based high-performance computing consortium.

The national network received a $10-million grant from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council that will help with ongoing and staffing costs, which will help RQCHP maintain their new supercomputer.

“This new shared-memory IT system is capable of solving many kinds of problems, like the number of processes that require more memory,” said Simmonds.

Despite its current utility, the rate at which supercomputers are becoming bigger and better render even the fanciest model obsolete very quickly, but both Côté and Simmonds say that this is the cost of doing science.

Simmonds added, “you have to invest in them. They may have a limited life, but if you want to do science, now you have to have the computing resources such as RQCHP's new supercomputer.”

“We have to maintain competition, and make these supercomputers freely available to scientists,” said Côté. “If we don't do this, scientists will fall out and not compete at the international level, and there will be less output in Canada. This is an investment to do research that benefits the whole country.”

Source: IT Business Canada