HPCwire: UK Researchers Have Big Plans for Cray Allocation

The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing

HPCwire >> Features

March 14, 2008

UK Researchers Have Big Plans for Cray Allocation

Page: 1 of 4
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »

Dr. Lee Margetts, head of Synthetic Environments at the University of Manchester Aerospace Research Institute, has recently been awarded the largest single allocation of CPU on the UK's HECToR Service. HPCwire contacted him to find out just what he hopes to do with three million processor hours of high-end compute time.

HPCwire: Hello Lee. Well let me start by asking what exactly is HECToR?

Lee Margetts: Hi. Well, HECToR is an acronym that stands for High End Computing Terascale Resource. It's a UK service that was launched in January this year. The first phase is a Cray XT4 with more than 6,000 dual core processors.

HPCwire: Three million processor hours seems like a lot of time on a Cray machine. What are you going to do with it all?

Margetts: Yes, it is a very generous allocation. In financial terms, we're talking about 1.7 million pounds sterling or 3.5 million dollars. This is a significant award for the University of Manchester. I'm personally not going to be involved in every stage of the process. I'm just one of a large team of academics and researchers who are using ParaFEM, a general purpose code for parallel finite element analysis that I started to develop with my PhD supervisor nearly 10 years ago.

HPCwire: What are you using the code for?

Margetts: Our main project is titled "Ultrascalable Modelling of Materials with Complex Architectures". This is led by Dr. Paul Mummery and Dr. Mohammad Sheikh at the University of Manchester. The team are using imaging techniques to create 3D models of real material microstructures. After an image is created, it is converted into a finite element mesh using software from a UK company called Simpleware Ltd.

HPCwire: Sounds fascinating, but what exactly are the application areas?

Margetts: There are many. Where do I start? We're doing some work with the European Space Agency, looking at the thermo-mechanical properties of carbon foams for spacecraft applications. We're also looking at the design of woven composites for high temperature and high performance engineering applications. There's also a project running that's looking at the lifetime behavior of concrete in nuclear reactor pressure vessels. This work is led by Professor Roger Crouch at the University of Durham. But perhaps the most exciting application area involves dinosaurs."

HPCwire: HPC and dinosaurs. That sounds like a combination that wouldn't get many hits in Google!

Page: 1 of 4
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »

Article Tools

Share Options

(Digg, Technorati, more)

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on HPCwire stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the HPC technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to HPCwire members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Top Headlines

GP-GPUs: OpenCL Is Ready For The Heavy Lifting

Mar 11 | Linux Magazine | CUDA may be the rage, but OpenCL is a standard that has some features you may need. Read more...

Can Free Software Drive the Fourth Paradigm?

Mar 09 | Free Software Magazine | Data-driven computing will need open software. Read more...

Graphics Card Maker Turns to High-Performance Bioinformatics

Mar 09 | Bio-IT World | Tahoe Informatics founder eyes GPUs, CUDA software. Read more...

CFD: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Mar 08 | Sporting Life | Formula One engineers differ on benefits of CFD. Read more...

AMD Tries to Draw Intel Into Chip Battle

Mar 08 | InfoWorld | AMD offers up 48-core server prize. Read more...

Read more headlines...

Featured Whitepapers

Virtualization for Aggregation And The vSMP Architecture™

Jan 12 | | In-depth look at vSMP Foundation server virtualization technology, technical implementation, use cases and capabilities. The technical whitepaper provides an architectural overview and details on the three vSMP Foundation products: vSMP Foundation for SMP, vSMP Foundation for Cluster and vSMP Foundation for Cloud.

Copper Cable Technologies for High Performance Computing

Jan 18 | | This white paper discusses Gore’s copper cable assemblies, and how they continue to exceed the standards for providing reliable, cost-effective solutions for high-performance computer applications.

View the White Paper Library

Multimedia

Webcast: Virtualized Data Center Roundtable

Join this online panel discussion for live Q&A with leading industry experts, analysts, and end-users to discuss the latest innovations, best practices, barriers to implementation, and measurable benefits of server virtualization with a particular focus on today's real world solutions.

Webcast: Watch SC09 Birds of a Feather Video: Scalable Fault-Tolerant HPC Supercomputers

Learn about scalable fault-tolerant architectures and examples of energy efficient and scalable supercomputing clusters using dual QDR InfiniBand to combine capacity computing with network failover capabilities with the help of programming languages such as MPI and a robust Linux cluster management package.

Webcast: High Performance Computing for a Smarter Planet

LIVE@SCO9: The IBM team discusses new innovations in hardware, software and services that help clients better understand their workloads and get insight from their R&D efforts. Technology demonstrations include the soon-to-be-released Power7 HPC processor, the DCS990 system with 2.4 petabytes of storage, the xCAT management tool, secure HPC cloud computing and more. Winners of two HPCwire Readers' and Editors’ Choice Awards! Take the IBM virtual tour at SC09 or more information go online to: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/sc09.html