The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
January 18, 2008
HECToR Gives Big Boost to UK Research Community
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »
January 14 marked the debut of HECToR, the UK's most advanced HPC resource. HPCwire asked Jane Nicholson, head of High End Computing for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, how the big Cray XT4 system will serve the UK's academic research community.
HPCwire: What is HECToR, and how important is it for the UK?
Jane Nicholson: HECToR stands for High End Computing Terascale Resource. It's the flagship academic computing service for the UK and is available to all scientific and engineering researchers in the UK academic community. HECToR is the latest in a line of academic computing services in the UK. The prior service was called HPCx. HECToR is an important part of the UK research infrastructure. An up-to-date computing facility adds to the resources academics have access to in universities.
HPCwire: What role does your organization, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, play with respect to HECToR?
Nicholson: We're one of seven research councils in the UK. EPSRC serves as the agent for procuring High End Computing academic services for three of the research councils: EPSRC, BBSRC and NERC. We run the procurement and provide a large share of the funding. EPSRC was formed in 1993 as an evolution of a previous research council called the Scientific and Engineering Research Council. Together, the seven UK research councils are roughly equivalent to America's NSF and NIH. The EPSRC itself is governed by a council consisting of leading researchers and industrialists in the UK. They act like a board of directors. Officially, the EPSRC is a nondepartmental government body. In sum, we're a government body that serves as a funding agency.
HPCwire: The initial system is a 63-peak-teraflop Cray XT4 that will morph in stages to a 250-teraflop system. Can you shed more light on that?
Nicholson: First, the Cray XT4 system is fully installed and working. It was installed in the August 2007 period, passed acceptance tests in September, became available to early users in that same month and to all users from 1 October 2007. Our agreement with Cray includes three phases. Phase 1 is the current 63-teraflop Cray XT4 system. Phase 2 is an upgrade to 250 peak teraflops in two years. Phase 3 is an optional upgrade two years after that to a substantially larger system.
HPCwire: Talk about the academic research community that will have access to the HECToR resource.
Nicholson: The prior HPCx service was based on a 15-teraflop computer that is still installed and has about 80 different research consortia working on it. Some have already moved to HECToR and we expect most to do so. Some of these groups are large, and others are small. There are just under 1,000 users on the current service. The vast majority of these are UK academics, but of course many of them are involved in collaborations with researchers all over the world.
Their disciplines range from the physical sciences and engineering to biology, biomedicine, environmental sciences and others. There is also research activity at and across the boundaries of disciplines, such as modelling blood flow in the heart. This brings together medical and biological researchers with physicists, and requires the use of CFD and structural analysis for the fluid-structures interactions.
Page: 1 of 41 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »
Article Tools
Share Options
(Digg, Technorati, more)
Subscribe
Sponsored Links
New Paper: Parallel Computing Without Parallel Programming
Learn how domain experts can run VHLL programs like MATLAB® on a variety of high-performance platforms without low-level reprogramming and how to work with the largest datasets and complex algorithms without sacrificing ease of use or reducing productivity.
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
Top Headlines
3D Seismic Data: Taking a Smarter Approach to Interpretation
Jul 09 | Engineer Live | The demand for computational tools to underpin the 3D seismic interpretation process has never been more apparent. Read more...
Engineering Unemployment Soared in 2Q to 8.6%
Jul 08 | EE Times | Unemployment for U.S. engineers has reached record levels, according to government figures. Read more...
Gartner Adjusts 2009 IT Spend Downward Again
Jul 08 | Network World | Global spending for 2009 projected to drop 6 percent, for a total of $3.2 trillion. Read more...
Concurrent and Parallel Are Not The Same
Jul 08 | Linux Magazine | Portability or efficiency? Neither is guaranteed when writing explicit parallel code. Read more...
800 TFLOP Real-Time Ray Tracing GPU Unveiled, Not for Gamers
Jul 07 | Ars Technica | Japanese company builds custom ASIC to accelerate real-time ray traced rendering for the auto industry. Read more...
Featured Whitepapers
Parallel Computing Without Parallel Programming
Jul 10 | | Engineers, scientists, and other domain experts depend on the productivity enabled by very high-level language (VHLL) tools like MATLAB® and Python. However, as datasets grow larger and programs get more sophisticated, ordinary desktop computers can no longer keep up. The paper explores how to run VHLL programs on high-performance platforms without low-level reprogramming. Work with large datasets and complex algorithms without sacrificing ease of use or reducing productivity.
Building High Performance Computing in a Green and Modular Solution Building Block
Apr 14 | | Many HPC IT departments are feeling the rising pressure to deliver more capacity computing and performance while trying to reduce the total cost of ownership. This white paper discusses how an environmentally-friendly and open-standards HPC building block based computing system using flexible interconnect options helps address capacity computing needs.
Multimedia
Webcast: Dell Expands HPC Access and Adoption with Intel Cluster Ready Program
Source: Addison Snell, GM/VP, Tabor Research; sponsored by Dell
Many organizations that could benefit from the use of HPC clusters find that it is complicated to get the systems up and running because of limited IT resources or the complexities of the clusters themselves. Learn how the Intel Cluster Ready program, for which Dell was an original partner, seeks to address this challenge for entry level and mid-range HPC users.
Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution
BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.
Webcast: HPC Development Solutions: Sun Studio & Sun HPC ClusterTools
Sun Studio Compilers and Tools and Sun HPC ClusterTools allow you to create high performance parallel applications for OpenSolaris, Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio Express 11/08 includes MPI performance analysis capabilities and full OpenMP 3.0 compiler support. Learn about all this and the latest in Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1.
Newsletters
Stay informed! Subscribe to HPCwire email Newsletters.
HPC Job Bank
-
HPC Systems Administrator
McGill University -
High Performance Computing Systems Administrator
Idaho National Laboratory -
Solution Engineer- HPC
Dell Inc -
Parallel Programmer
Cardiff University -
Principal Software Research Engineer
Indiana University -
Post Doctoral Researcher - Exascale Stream Computing
IBM - Visit the HPCwire Job Bank
Featured Events
-
July 13-16, 2009
WORLDCOMP'09
Las Vegas , NV
USA
-
August 24-28, 2009
Data Mining: Levels I, II, & III
Denver , CO
USA