ACADEMIA

        T-Platforms, the Russian supercomputer holding, and the Finnish company CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. (CSC) have signed a letter of interest. The document reflects the companies` interest in mutual promotion of their products on the Russian and international markets and possibility of CSC software use on T-Platforms petascale HPC systems.

        T-Platforms holding is the largest Russian developer and manufacturer of supercomputer systems, and CSC-IT Center for Science is the largest Finnish supercomputer center that solves a broad range of HPC problems.

        The agreement signed by the companies covers a broad spectrum of subjects that T-Platforms and CSC are concerned to collaborate on. A big block of issues is linked to CSC in-house developed software use on the hardware environment developed by T-Platforms. CSC is most of all interested in the new Russian blade-system that allows building petascale supercomputers. CSC is willing to discuss the use of its software and standard benchmarks on the new T-Platforms blade-system and PowerXCell 8i-based platforms. High sustained performance and performance/watt ratio may lead to further dialogue on purchasing issues between the companies.

        CSC separately marked the power efficiency ratio of the new T-Platforms blade-system. Today the power efficiency issue is often critical as the energy cost makes nearly the biggest part of the supercomputer operating expenses. According to the Finnish specialists, power consumption of T-Platforms supercomputer systems meets the latest world standards and among other things makes the HPC solutions of the Russian company competitive on the international market.

         In the framework of the agreement T-Platforms can also provide CSC with access to the petascale supercomputing equipment developed and installed by T-Platforms in Russia in case if CSC lacks computing resources to fulfill its future computing tasks. This fully meets the strategy of T-Platforms holding that has recently started offering large-scale modeling and simulation services and computing time rent.

         The Finnish company has shown high interest in the new T-Platforms solutions and this may lead to further mutual promotion of the companies` products on the Russian and international markets.