MILPITAS, Calif. and TOKYO, Japan, July 16 — SGI Japan, Ltd., part of the global trusted leader in high performance computing, SGI, today announced the installation of a new, large-scale system at Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd. (SEL). The system, which will be used to facilitate the research and development of semiconductor technologies, combines SGI’s large-scale shared-memory UV 2000 server and ICE X blade-type cluster server into a unified, large-scale system.

SEL is a specialized research and development company that patents semiconductor technologies. This supercomputing solution from SGI, which has been fully operational since March 2014, will facilitate the research and development of field-effect transistors that use oxide semiconductors, as well as a large number of other products related to active matrix displays, non-volatile memory, and lithium-ion batteries.

“We are privileged to be providing the computational resource that drives SEL’s achievements in developing cutting-edge technology for industry,” said Manabu Mochizuki, SGI Japan president and representative director. “With this installation, our collaboration with this impressive organization grows even stronger.”

“As a leader in partnering with research organizations to provide them with computational tools, SGI is proud to have been selected by SEL to support them in their innovative semiconductor research,” said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO of SGI. “We look forward to seeing the results of our technology combined with SEL’s leading research, and further showcasing how our offerings can power the work behind sophisticated research and development organizations globally.”

SEL first installed SGI’s server solutions in 2008. As SEL is focused on exemplary research and development in the semiconductor field, it has worked to ensure that the computational resource driving its research has improved in parallel with its own offerings. This marks the second time that SEL has implemented a large-scale overhaul of its systems.

A primary reason SEL selected SGI was the unique ability to offer a supercomputer with a hybrid structure, which combine a large-scale shared memory server and distributed cluster servers into a single, unified system. Given this highly optimized configuration, application performance has increased as much as 2.6-fold compared to SEL’s previous system, with a theoretical overall peak performance of 180 teraflops. Enabled with such a high performing solution, SEL’s research and engineering staff can be even more efficient in delivering world-class innovation.

A large-scale shared-memory server allows a single system to make use of extensive memory space, while distributed cluster servers allow high-speed processing through massively parallel computations. By combining these two server types into a single, unified system, and by appropriately designating computation processes according to their content and characteristics, SEL has been able to create a computational environment of unprecedented efficiency, facilitating cutting-edge research and development into ground-breaking semiconductor technologies.

The SGI UV 2000 large-scale shared-memory server boasts 768 cores from the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v2 product family with 16TB of memory. The SGI ICE X large-scale blade-type cluster server combines 7,200 cores from the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family with 46TB of memory. The systems’ nodes are connected by high-speed InfiniBand 4x FDR. Finally, the servers share the use of 370TB of RAID storage provided by the SGI InfiniteStorage 5600.

About SGI

SGI, the trusted leader in high performance computing (HPC), is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges by delivering technical computing, Big Data analytics, cloud computing, and petascale storage solutions that accelerate time to discovery, innovation, and profitability. Visit sgi.com (sgi.com/) for more information.

—

Source: SGI