Facilitating the Advancement of Computational Science

Start:

01.01.2003

End:

01.01.2008

Project code: FACS
Research group: Database Architectures and Information Access (INS1)

Project coordinator: Niels Nes

Supercomputing on a Budget: CWI to install NWO-funded Linux-based Supercomputer Cluster
News item (October, 2003)

The Netherlands Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) has received a grant from the Netherlands Research Office (NWO) to fund a Linux supercomputer cluster. The cluster will consist of a 48 processor cluster using the latest 64-bit AMD Opteron(TM) processor, a total of 128Gbyte of memory, 8 Tbyte disks, tied together with infiniband high-speed interconnects.

This configuration is comparable to the supercomputers of 1997, which costed 50 times as much.

The cluster will be used by CWI scientists to support state-of-the-art fundamental research in fields like, multi-media databases, machine learning, software engineering and cryptography. The cluster has been designed with the different needs of these groups in mind, such as high-speed interconnects between nodes to share memory, RAID systems for ultra-fast IO-to-disk, and sheer CPU power, in terms of price-performance.

Having a medium scale supercomputer on its premises allows CWI researchers to experiment with both hardware and software in a way that would conflict with the requirements of a production-like setting.

Funding for the cluster is provided by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO. The cluster, which is set to replace an aging SGI supercomputer, shows how affordable high-performance supercomputing has become, Dr Niels Nes, CWI researcher remarks: "at one tenth the price, we get three times more computing power." The cluster has been designed to be easily expandable, such that increased demand for computing power can be met by simply adding the required types of nodes. "Given the intense collaboration of many CWI researchers with other universities and companies, we expect the cluster to grow every year" comments Dr Nes.

The AMD Opteron processor is AMD's latest processor. Based on the AMD64 architecture, it is designed to run both 32- and 64-bit applications simultaneously. The AMD Opteron processor has an integrated DDR memory controller which dramatically reduces memory latency and allows 256 Terabytes of memory to be addressed at once. The built-in HyperTransport(TM) technology allows up to 8 AMD Opteron processors to be connected at a bandwidth of 19.2 Gigabytes/s.

Dr Sander Bohte, machine learning researcher at CWI said: "With the AMD Opteron platform, we could integrate the very different high-performance computing needs at CWI at a previously unrealisable price-point by using the latest in commodity hardware. A big plus is also that the AMD Opteron is a clear evolutionary step from our desktop environments, which means that when we develop code on our workstations, the cluster will do the same job, just much faster. No fuss. We look forward to working with AMD to gain maximum benefit from this new computing resource."