ACADEMIA

Scientists and novices alike have gazed at the night sky for centuries and pondered, "How was the Universe formed?" Silicon Graphics announced that through the use of its supercomputing technology, the answers to these and many other questions about the origins of the Universe may be uncovered by astrophysics scientists at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and the Nanjing Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory. With the new SGI Altix systems installed in November at each observatory - Shanghai and Nanjing - scientists are exploring the theory of the structure of evolution of the Universe by running high-resolution numerical simulations of galaxy formation. Galaxy Formation is one of the most important and most challenging problems in astrophysics. In standard theories, it is believed that the Universe is dominated by dark matter -- matter that influences the evolution of the universe gravitationally -- but is not seen directly in present observations. Most astronomers think that the universe was formed during an event called the Big Bang—a giant explosion which occurred between 10 and 20 billion years ago. During the Big Bang all of the space, time, matter and energy in the universe were created. This giant explosion hurled matter in all directions and caused space itself to expand. As the universe cooled the material in it combined to form galaxies, stars, and planets. "Although there have been many exciting developments in analytical, semi-analytical or empirical modeling of dark matter distribution, their validity still depends heavily on the resolution of the simulations used. With the new Altix system, we can easily run the 256³ particles in one step of 20 seconds, and run 512³ in 6-7 minutes. Altix makes science easier," said Mr. Long Long Feng, project leader of Nanjing Astronomical Observation. "The other benefit of the Altix system is it lets researchers concentrate on real science, we do not need to worry about programming in order to manage the system -- the system is very straightforward and easy to manage." "We selected SGI Altix 350 because its large shared-memory really benefits these kinds of simulations," added Mr. Yi Peng Jing, project leader of Shanghai Astronomical Observation. "The complex computations are very memory intensive and SGI is unique in the industry for its ability to handle such large, complex and memory-intensive calculations." "SGI systems have been deployed at planetariums and science centers around the world to help unlock the secrets of our universe and beyond. The Astronomical Observatories of Shanghai and Nanjing are among those prestigious ranks of leading research centers in search of the answers to the origins of the universe," said Alex Lee, president, SGI, China. "SGI solutions combined with the expertise of scientists' at the Chinese Academy of Science's Observatories will accelerate research progress, fueling innovation and solving many of the mysteries in all areas of cosmology." Two SGI Altix 350 systems powered by 16 Intel Itanium 2 processors each with 96GB and 48GB shared memory and running the 64-bit Linux operation system, were installed in November at the two locations - Nanjing and Shanghai - but run cosmological simulations for the same project.