Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- SARA, (Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum
Amsterdam), Academic Computing Services of Amsterdam recently announced
that it has purchased the largest known IBM SP2 system in Europe, a 20
GFlop peak-performance, 76-node machine. Funding was obtained jointly from
regional and national institutions: the Vrije Universiteit (VU) at
Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Dutch National
Science Organization (NWO).

"The SP2 will be used primarily for research in medicine, molecular
dynamics, physics and datamining," Paul Wielinga, SARA's project engineer
at SARA's high-performance department told HPCwire. "We don't anticipate
serious porting problems, because we've already worked on a number of
parallelization projects for our 8-node SP1. Of course, our experience in
some areas, like molecular chemistry, is much stronger than in others.
Programming these machines can be complex but no more so than with
alternative architectures."

"Within the academic community, various departments will have computer
time allotted relative to the amount of funding available," Wielinga
noted. "All proposals for time are peer-reviewed and prioritized
accordingly."

Among SARA's anticipated customers are sponsors like UvA and VU,
other universities and research institutes in the Netherlands, plus
research centers in industry and commerce. No private organizations have
yet signed up for use. The system is planned to be in full operation by
January 1996.

Nodes will be housed in 5 frames, 4 with 1 wide node and 14 thin nodes.
The next-largest European SP2 is a 70-node machine at the Leibnitz Center
in Munich, Germany.

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Alan Beck is the associate editor of HPCwire.
Reader comments are welcome.