MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., Jan. 30, 2018 — Nor-Tech, one of the primary high performance technology suppliers for the Nobel Physics Prize winning LIGO Gravitational Wave Project, just announced the company received another major order for high performance cluster updates from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (UWM). This is in addition to a related in-process project from another LIGO institution.

UWM just finalized an order with Nor-Tech for a turnkey HPC cluster solution with nearly 100 Intel dual-CPU Skylake compute nodes and nearly 2,500 compute cores. In all, the order includes new racks, clean cable management and extensive testing. Nor-Tech will also provide onsite assistance with un-boxing and racking.

After a 20-year search, the first gravitational wave observation was officially announced on Feb. 11, 2016 by the LIGO team. Gravitational waves were picked up by the two LIGO detectors at Livingston, La. and Hanford, Wash. The Nobel Prize was awarded a year later. This is the first physical evidence of a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted in 1915 in his General Theory of Relativity. LIGO is also the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the National Science Foundation.

The LIGO team is an international consortium of leading technicians, engineers, scientists, and research institutions. Nor-Tech has been working with several major LIGO consortium members for more than 11 years on the project by designing, building, and upgrading a number of the clusters that made the original detection and subsequent detections possible.

A major service Nor-Tech is providing to LIGO team members is the availability of Nor-Tech’s demo cluster—which enables no-risk testing of the latest high performance hardware and software, including Intel’s Skylake. The no-cost, no-strings demo cluster is available to all of Nor-Tech’s clients and prospects.

Nor-Tech Executive Vice President and General Manager Jeff Olson said, “We continue to be humbled by the astounding achievements of the LIGO team. Our goal has been and always will be to provide support with the latest and best technology. In this case, the addition of Skylake processor functionality will significantly improve performance of UWM’s existing Nor-Tech cluster.”

In addition to seven LIGO supercomputers around the world, Nor-Tech continues to build powerful, leading-edge HPC clusters for premier research institutions. The company takes the intimidation factor out of high performance computing by delivering a turnkey solution and promising no wait-time service—two reasons that LIGO team members chose Nor-Tech in the first place and continue to value their collaboration.

About Nor-Tech

Nor-Tech is on CRN’s list of the top 40 Data Center Infrastructure Providers along with Dell, HPE and Lenovo; and is a cluster builder for 2015 and 2017 Nobel Physics Award-winning projects. Nor-Tech engineers average 20+ years of experience. This strong industry reputation and deep partner relationships also enable the company to be a leading supplier of cost-effective desktops, laptops, tablets and Chromebooks to schools and enterprises. All of Nor-Tech’s technology is made by Nor-Tech in Minnesota and supported by Nor-Tech around the world. The company has been in business since 1998 and is headquartered in Burnsville, Minn. just outside of Minneapolis.

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Source: Nor-Tech