ACADEMIA

Gen-i and Weta Digital Ltd have signed a teaming agreement and officially opened the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre (NZSC), located in Wellington, making the supercomputing cluster commercially available to high performance computer users throughout the world. The supercomputer ranks 80th on the list of the world's 500 most powerful computers and is the largest supercomputing cluster available for commercial hire in the southern hemisphere, according to the companies. It has already attracted interest from potential clients in New York, Telecom NZ hosting and storage manager Eric Pilon said. The supercomputer comprises 504 IBM blade servers, each of which contains two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors. Weta Digital first bought the blades, that combined are capable of performing at 2 teraflops, to create the special effects for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The NZSC will be available to universities or research and development organisations - or indeed any institution across any sector that requires on-demand power and performance to analyse large amounts of data but lack the computing infrastructure. Other uses for the NZSC may include computer-aided engineering, digital content and creation, economic and financial modelling, life science and geo-science research and development. The first initiative to market since being acquired by Telecom New Zealand, Gen-i will market the service nationally and internationally, and with Telecom manage a communications infrastructure to enable access to the NZSC environment from almost anywhere in the world. Telecom New Zealand will provide dedicated national connectivity between all main centres up to one Gigabit per second, as well as dedicated international connectivity to a number of global sites. The NZSC is available immediately and Gen-i is now actively seeking projects. Customers can book the NZSC by the number of processors for set time periods, depending on their needs. Gen-i has made the connectivity speeds and pricing models flexible in order to meet the anticipated variety of needs. Network security is provided by Gen-i’s Safecom suite of services, which includes a managed firewall service and 24/7 proactive monitoring. Gen-i group general manager Chris Quin said the establishment of the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre was "a flag in the ground for New Zealand, putting the country at the forefront of supercomputing-based research and development". Weta Digital is jointly owned by Peter Jackson and fellow Oscar award winners Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk. Jackson's studios began shooting a remake of the 1933 classic film "King Kong" on Monday, and the director has said the giant ape will be entirely computer-generated. For more information, please go to: Http://www.geni.co.nz