HPCwire: University of Arizona Adds SGI Altix ICE System

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May 20, 2008

University of Arizona Adds SGI Altix ICE System

1392-core water-chilled system cuts air conditioning costs by 40 percent

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 20 -- To provide a robust hybrid computing environment that will optimize the performance of applications best suited to cluster or shared memory computing, the University Information Technology Services (UITS) at the University of Arizona (UA) has again purchased technology from SGI. A 1392-core SGI Altix ICE 8200 is being added as an extension to their existing SGI Altix 4700 shared memory system. The new SGI Altix ICE will be available to all research groups on campus that require high-performance computing. The SGI Altix ICE system's unique space-saving design and energy-efficient water-cooled doors will immediately allow UA to realize cost-savings in a number of ways.

"We made a decision two years ago to replace our old shared memory computer with a larger shared memory computer and a cluster computing system," said Dr. Michael Bruck, assistant director of research computing at the University Information Technology Services. "We have some research applications being used on campus that require a shared memory system and we have other research applications that used shared memory because that was the only computing environment available to them. Now researchers using applications that don't require shared memory can leverage the high throughput computing of the SGI Altix ICE for their projects."

Research already planned for the system includes astronomy, weather and global climate, life sciences, engineering, business, social sciences and psychology. One of the first users of the new SGI Altix ICE system is Dr. Romeel Dave, assistant professor, astronomy, at UA's Steward Observatory. Dave has done theoretical work on the formation of galaxies using the SGI Altix shared memory system and will continue to work on the SGI Altix ICE to run simulations of how galaxies form and have evolved from the Big Bang to the present.

"Galaxies undergo a complex life cycle of birth, growth, and death, and are intimately connected with their surrounding environment through inflow and outflow processes," said Dave. "Modeling these complex processes on supercomputers enables us to study why some galaxies are red and some blue, why some are large and some small, and why some are featureless ellipticals and some majestic spirals (like our own Milky Way). The simulations we will run on the ICE system will be among the largest and most advanced of their kind, and will open up new windows on understanding quantitatively why galaxies exhibit such a wide range of properties."

Dr. Vicki L. Chandler, professor of molecular and cellular biology at the UA's BIO5 Institute, will be another major user of the SGI Altix ICE system. She and her research group investigate the regulation of gene expression in maize. Identifying the sequences regulating differential expression and factors that interact with these sequences should provide important information on mechanisms of gene regulation. The work will be applicable to numerous plant systems and is expected to greatly enhance the potential of genetic engineering.

Cool-Running HPC System Saves Energy and Money

The SGI Altix ICE system supports the University of Arizona's ongoing commitment to energy efficiency campus-wide. The ICE system with water-chilled racks will conserve energy and greatly reduce the electrical costs associated with their datacenter cooling. The UITS has three air-conditioning systems: one 30-ton and two 20-ton units. They were running the 30-ton and the 20-ton continuously to keep the room cool; the third is the backup unit.

"With the Altix 4700 shared memory system and the new Altix ICE, instead of having 256 processors we're going to have 2,020 processors, and instead of 29 tons of air conditioning we will need only 1.7 tons," said Dr. Bruck. "We're getting 30 times the processing power and less than one-tenth of the A/C cooling requirement. The computers are generating as much heat as the old one we had, but now, the chilled water in the doors is absorbing all the heat. Our datacenter has turned off the 20-ton unit, saving 40 percent on the air conditioning bill, right from day one."

The UITS now has two fully functioning A/C units as back up, and, as Bruck points out, "This is going to extend the expected lifetime of these air conditioners. Normally, they would have a 5 to 7 year life expectancy but they are going to last a lot longer."

"The revolutionary design of SGI Altix ICE allows for 50 percent more computation at one-half the space. This means that universities can double their compute power in their existing datacenter space. This, coupled with the power savings, dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership," said Deepak Thakkar, Ph.D., higher education and research segment manager at SGI.

In late December 2007 the UA purchased, through SGI's exclusive higher-education partner James River Technical, Inc. (JRTI), the SGI Altix ICE system, with water-chilled racks, powered by 1,392 Intel Xeon processors and 2.8TB of memory. The UA also has a SGI Altix 4700 with 628 cores and 1.2TB of memory.

"The UITS team at UA has forged a productive relationship with their research community resulting in the implementation of a cost-effective and efficient hybrid HPC environment -- providing both shared memory and cluster compute cycles," said Tom Mountcastle, president of James River Technical. "The Altix ICE, coupled with the Altix 4700, provides the required performance and throughput needed by the diverse community of researchers on the UA campus. And UA had the forethought to procure systems, which will allow them to rapidly expand their capacity and capabilities as needed to satisfy the compute needs of their researchers. This will pay significant dividends in the future."

About SGI

SGI (NASDAQ: SGIC) is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI delivers a complete range of high-performance server, visualization and storage solutions along with industry-leading professional services and support that enable its customers to overcome the challenges of complex data-intensive workflows and accelerate breakthrough discoveries, innovation and information transformation. SGI helps customers solve significant challenges whether it's enhancing the quality of life through drug research, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars and airplanes, studying global climate change, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or helping enterprises manage large data. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

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Source: SGI

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