ACADEMIA

The Altix 4700 will be a major plus for 350 researchers in Quebec: The Altix 4700, the most powerful shared-memory supercomputer in Canada, is now available to 350 scientists in Quebec, thanks to a major in-kind contribution from SGI Canada to the Quebec Network for High Performance Computing (RQCHP), a group comprising five university-level institutions (Université de Montréal, Université de Sherbrooke, Concordia University, Ecole Polytechnique and Bishop's University). The RQCHP now possess the Altix 4700 supercomputer wich offers 384 dual-core processors (768 cores) and 1,536 gigabyte (GB) of random-access memory (by comparison, a personal computer today has less than 1 to 2 GB of RAM). It will vastly increase the capacity and performance of Quebec's existing pool of high-performance computing systems. In theory, the Altix 4700 is capable of performing 4,9 Teraflops (a teraflop equals one trillion operations per second). The powerful new SGI system alone represents 30% of the total performance capacity of the RQCHP. "What makes SGI's help so important - I can't stress this enough - is that it will allow many research centres in Quebec to be competitive in an environment where technology is changing very rapidly," said Université de Montréal Rector Luc Vinet, speaking today at a ceremony honoring the SGI Canada donation. Also present were Robert Davidson, Director, Programs and Operations, Canada Foundation for Innovation and Martin Pinard, President of SGI Canada, together with professors David Sénéchal and Michel Côté, respectively RQCHP Director and Université de Montréal Site Director for the inter-university computing network. "With the Altix 4700, our researchers can now count on one of the most powerful shared-memory supercomputers in the world," Université de Montréal Dean of Arts and Science Joseph Hubert added. "New doors will open for our researchers, who will be able to perform complex calculations that were almost unimaginable until now." "We're delighted to be contributing toward the advancement of science in Quebec and facilitating a whole world of innovations and discoveries, a world where the scope of human imagination is the only limit, said Martin Pinard, President of SGI Canada. It's obvious today that high-performance computing plays a crucial role in the majority of scientific discoveries. With its incomparable features, including sustained performance and massive memory, the Altix 4700 is the tool par excellence for scientists in the 21st century." Studies by RQCHP researchers are relevant to a vast range of scientific fields and their spinoffs influence sectors such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, the automotive, aerospace, physics, chemistry and nanotechnology, to name just a few. The performance of the supercomputers that researchers can access has a definite impact on the possibilities for conducting valuable research. The Altix 4700 makes possible vastly shorter time frames for simulations... in some cases reducing periods of two weeks to a mere two minutes.