SGI announced that the Centre de calcul scientifique (Centre for Scientific Computing) at the Universite de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Canada, has selected an SGI Rackable high performance computing (HPC) solution to accelerate the study of solid state physics, computational chemistry, operations research, brain mapping, acoustics, CFD, and genetics, for staff, students, and other researchers both at the university and across Canada.

The chosen solution contains twenty six racks configured with over 39,600 cores of 12-core AMD Opteron processors Model 6172 and 6174, more than 57TB of memory and InfiniBand GigE and 10 GigE networking fabrics. The system currently ranks as #41 in the Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, and is the fastest supercomputer in Canada.

"Speed and scale remain critical factors in managing the compute demands of the Canadian research community," said David Senechal, professor of physics and scientific director of the Centre for Scientific Computing at the Universite de Sherbrooke. "We're delighted to have this system in place, and look forward to using it to tackle problems we could only dream of in the past."

The SGI system is part of Canada's National Platform for High-Performance Computing, managed by the Compute Canada Collaboration, and will be available to all academic researchers in Canada, irrespective of their institution. It was installed thanks to the support of the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Quebec Government.

"The Universite de Sherbrooke is a recognized leader in scientific computing among the academic and extended research community throughout Canada," said Bill Mannel, vice president of product marketing at SGI. "The SGI HPC system in operation there will continue to provide the university with greater compute power and productivity, allowing them to chart new paths for scientific discovery. We are pleased to support the university, the hundreds of active users who will benefit from using the system, and their increasingly complex research and data requirements."

"Having the fastest supercomputer in Canada places the Centre de calcul scientifique at the Universite de Sherbrooke on par with many of the world's leading research institutions," said Paul Struhsaker, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business at AMD. "By using AMD Opteron processors, the SGI Rackable servers will provide performance per watt and scalability that researchers at the Centre and across Canada require to move their research efforts forward for years to come."