| SGI
Altix 3000 supercluster for Cambridge University COSMOS
Posted: 5 May 2003
New System Allows Extension of Cosmology Grid; Consortium
Members Collaborate Using Visual Area Networking Technology
Dubai, UAE — SGI has today announced a contract
to provide an SGI Altix 3000 supercluster to the U.K. COSMOS consortium
led by Professor Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge
as part of a long-term agreement between the two organisations.
The latest addition to the consortium’s SGI infrastructure,
based on the Intel Itanium 2 processor, will form the next phase
of a British computational and visualisation grid installed by SGI
to support the COSMOS project.
This initiative enables experts to collaborate on research to model
the history of the universe from the first fractions of a second
after the Big Bang to the present day, about 14 billion years later.
The Altix 3000 system, powered by128 Itanium 2 processors, will
form the core of the U.K. cosmology grid (CosmoGrid), supporting
collaboration between consortium members through the continuation
of integrated high-performance computing (HPC) and complex data
management, as well as remote collaborative visualisation using
SGI Visual Area Networking technologies.
Members of the COSMOS consortium include the Department of Applied
Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Institute of Astronomy, and
Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, as well as Imperial
College London, the University of Portsmouth and the University
of Sussex.
This 64-bit system, featuring Intel Itanium 2 processors running
the Linux operating system, supports SGI’s close working relationship
with Intel, which has also provided two small servers to the consortium
to support development work. The decision to purchase the Altix
3000 supercluster was based on the combination of highly scalable
Itanium 2 performance, cache-coherent global shared memory, integrated
visualisation and hierarchical storage.
The system allows for fast development time scales and high productivity
using shared memory programming with OpenMP, while also producing
excellent benchmark results for distributed-memory programming codes
based on MPI.
The contract is part of the long-term collaboration between Professor
Hawking’s COSMOS consortium and SGI; the two entities have
worked together since 1997. The original COSMOS platform was a 32-processor
SGI Origin 2000 server, later upgraded to a 64-processor SGI Onyx
family server, including the CXFSÔ storage system. The Altix
128-processor system is a further indication of SGI’s long-term
commitment to the COSMOS project.
Professor Stephen Hawking, principal investigator of the COSMOS
consortium, commented: “The new COSMOS computer — an
SGI Altix 3000 — will enable us to keep up with the dramatic
data about our universe which is now coming in. We are pleased that
our collaboration with both SGI and Intel will ensure that U.K.
scientists remain at the leading edge of cosmological research.”
Paul Shellard, Ph.D., director of the COSMOS supercomputer, added,
“The SGI Altix 3000 system with Itanium 2 chips makes available
an entirely new threshold in scalable shared-memory performance
for the U.K. COSMOS consortium. The rapid time to solution possible
using OpenMP shared-memory programming offers a key competitive
advantage in this fast advancing field driven by new satellite observations
and other experiments. Together with integrated shared filesystems
and remote visualisation, the state-of-the-art Altix supercluster
will give us the ability to test our mathematical models of the
universe seamlessly against the huge data sets being produced by
cosmological observations.”
Professor Roy Maartens, head of the cosmology group at the University
of Portsmouth, noted, “With the new Altix system, cosmologists
will have extra computing power to extract ever more accurate information
from the data about the size and shape and ingredients of the universe.”
“Scientific research is constantly at the forefront of technology,
pushing the boundaries of high-performance computing and demanding
higher processing power with greater scalability,” said John
Woodget, Intel marketing director, EMEA.
“The Itanium Processor Family delivers new levels of performance
to support this kind of complex, data-intensive operation, in both
academic and enterprise environments. By combining the high-throughput
functionality of the Itanium 2 architecture with SGI hardware, the
COSMOS team has dramatically upgraded the capability of its computer
infrastructure. Intel’s own commitment to development ensures
that the Itanium processor family will continue to support the needs
of projects such as COSMOS well into the future.”
SGI’s Altix 3000 systems, launched in January of this year,
combine SGI supercomputing architecture with Intel Itanium 2 processors
and the Linux operating system, and since its launch it has shattered
scalability and performance records. The new installation at Cambridge
University also includes additional graphics equipment and an upgrade
to a CXFS storage system featuring 2GB storage area network and
6TB SGI TP9400.
Steve Coggins, senior VP, EMEA at SGI, commented, “With the
help of SGI Managed Services, the COSMOS project is able to exploit
the full potential of the combination of visualisation, high-performance
computing and data management. We value the continued challenge
of meeting the needs of a world-class organisation that is pushing
the limits of computational science.”
For further details about SGI’s involvement with universities
and research labs around the world, visit www.sgi.com/go/research.
About SGI
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is the world’s
leader in high-performance computing, visualisation and the management
of complex data. SGI’s vision is to provide technology that
enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs
of the 21st century. Whether it’s sharing images to aid in
brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate
or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting,
SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for
scientific, engineering and creative users.
SGI was named on FORTUNE magazine’s 2003 list of “Top
100 Companies to Work For.” With offices worldwide, the company
is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
For more information see www.sgi.com.
About Intel
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is also a leading manufacturer
of computer, networking and communications products.
For more information on Intel see www.intel.com/pressroom.
Posted by Richard Price,
Editor Pipeline Magazine
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