HPCwire: Barcelona Supercomputing Center Develops Advanced Prototype

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

HPCwire >> Off the Wire

July 30, 2008

Barcelona Supercomputing Center Develops Advanced Prototype

Based on Cell and Power6 processors, the new supercomputer prototype will increase the computing capacity at the service of the European scientific community

BARCELONA, Spain, July 30 -- The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has a new supercomputer prototype, to be used in the European project PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe). PRACE aims to consolidate the bases of a European supercomputing infrastructure, and BSC is one the main partners. The work done with this prototype, called MariCel (in Catalan means Sea and Sky), will help to define the hardware components and the software stack of a future machine. The future system will have a minimum capacity of 10 petaflops and will be at the service of the European scientific community. This represents a calculation capacity of ten times more than the current most powerful in the world, according to the last TOP500 list.

"MariCel is part of an initiative to create a common supercomputing structure for Europe. On this prototype, similar to the architecture of the American Roadrunner, we will test the latest software technologies, some of them developed at the BSC. We think that in Spain we will be able to install supercomputers 100 times more powerful than the current MareNostrum in 2011 or 2012," says Francesc Subirada, associate director of BSC. The Kaleidoscope project code will be run on this new prototype. Kaleidoscope is carried out by BSC and Repsol and its focus is to optimize and execute in MareNostrum, as well as in Cell processors, the Reverse Time Migration (RTM) codes used in next generation seismic imaging technology. It is expected that these codes will accelerate and streamline oil and gas exploration by several orders of magnitude compared to current industry standards.

About BSC

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC) houses the MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Their mission is to investigate, develop and manage information technology in order to facilitate scientific progress. With this objective, there has been taken special dedication to research areas such as computer sciences, life sciences and earth sciences. In the context of this multi-disciplinary approach, the BSC has a large number of researchers and experts in HPC (high performing computing), which facilitate scientific progress together with state-of-the-art supercomputing resources. This Spanish multi-disciplinary supercomputing center, headed by Professor Mateo Valero, was established by a consortium made up by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, by the Government of Catalonia and by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). For further information about the BSC, visit www.bsc.es.

-----

Source: Barcelona Supercomputing Center

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

Feature Articles

The Week in Review

C-DAC announces plans for a petaflop system; IBM researchers are working on vertical integration techniques to extend Moore's Law another 15 years. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
Read More...

Moscow State University Supercomputer Has Petaflop Aspirations

The Moscow State University supercomputer, Lomonosov, has been selected for a high-performance makeover, with the goal of tripling its processing power to achieve petaflop-level performance in 2010. T-Platforms, who developed and manufactured the supercomputer, is the odds-on favorite to lead the project.
Read More...

Intel Ups Performance Ante with Westmere Server Chips

Right on schedule, Intel has launched its Xeon 5600 processors, codenamed "Westmere EP." The 5600 represents the 32nm sequel to the Xeon 5500 (Nehalem EP) for dual-socket servers. Intel is touting better performance and energy efficiency, along with new security features, as the big selling points of the new Xeons.
Read More...

Read more HPCwire features...

Top Headlines

Australia Commissions Cray Supercomputer

Mar 19 | OfficialWire | New super to support intelligence work Down Under. Read more...

Intel Partners See 'Easy' Upgrade Path With Xeon 5600 Chips

Mar 18 | ChannelWeb | Westmere parts already showing up in HPC machines. Read more...

AMD: OEMs primed for Opteron 6100s

Mar 17 | The Register | But what about the tier ones? Read more...

Arrival of the Desktop Supercomputer

Mar 17 | Cadalyst Magazine | A new generation of workstations is changing the nature of technical computing. Read more...

Scheduling HPC In The Cloud

Mar 17 | Linux Magazine | Latest iteration of Sun Grid Engine able to tap into Cloud. 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