ACADEMIA
SARA installs new supercomputer, Huygens
SARA Computing and Networking Services, the Netherlands National Computing Facilities Foundation (NCF), and IBM have announced the successful installation of the new supercomputer, Huygens POWER6 at SARA in Amsterdam. 
The new system, funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), is based on IBM POWER6 chip technology, the world's fastest microprocessor. Dr. Ronald Plasterk, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, will officially unveil SARA's new supercomputer on September 11, 2008. The new Huygens system will be used by hundreds of scientific researchers, and will be integrated in the European supercomputer grid. The boost in computational performance, memory capacity and IO performance will enable scientists in the Netherlands to address new scientific grand challenges that were previously out of reach. "This Huygens POWER6 supercomputer marks a new milestone for high performance computing in the Netherlands, and will enable scientists make new exciting discoveries and foster the competitiveness of the Dutch economy," says SARA Managing Director Dr. Anwar Osseyran. "The IBM POWER6 supercomputer is an important prerequisite to establish a so-called 'supernode' in the Netherlands, an international hub of High Performance Computing, connectivity, data storage, software, and application and user support for the scientific and high-tech communities." Scientific research seen as critical to society -- climate prediction, water management and chemistry, for example -- is expected to greatly benefit from the extra computational horsepower. It will quadruple SARA's computing capacity and would rank among the 35 most powerful supercomputers in the world according to the June 2008 list of the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites (www.top500.org). The Huygens supercomputer at SARA is an IBM Power 575 Hydro-Cluster model, which uses a unique water-cooling system that is 33 percent more efficient than traditional air-cooled systems. Heat is removed from the electronics by water-chilled copper plates mounted in direct contact with each POWER6 microprocessor. Huygens is the first Power 575 Hydro-Cluster to run Linux. It is planned to achieve a peak speed of 60 trillion calculations per second (Teraflop/s) when it is completed in August 2008. The system has 3328 4.7 GHz processor cores, a total memory capacity of 15616 GB, and 972 TB disk capacity. Dr. Patrick Aerts, director of NCF: "Since the establishment of NCF, Dutch researchers have been able to access state-of-the-art high-end computing facilities in the Netherlands. The procurement and installation of Huygens reconfirms the Dutch position in Europe, to the benefit of top-level Dutch scientific research." "The new Huygens supercomputer is an important addition to European supercomputer infrastructure," said Harry van Dorenmalen, general manager of IBM Benelux. "Supercomputers are being increasingly recognized as important pillars of scientific advancement and commercial progress for the new century. SARA has taken an important step in keeping the European research community on the leading edge of global technology trends." The Huygens system will be part of the DEISA supercomputing grid (www.deisa.eu), a pan-European HPC service integrating national supercomputing services of eleven leading European HPC centers. Through PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) and with the new Huygens supercomputer, the Netherlands will become an important supernode in the European HPC ecosystem. This is important both for the Dutch scientific community as well as for Dutch society concerned with climate change and water management.
The new system, funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), is based on IBM POWER6 chip technology, the world's fastest microprocessor. Dr. Ronald Plasterk, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, will officially unveil SARA's new supercomputer on September 11, 2008. The new Huygens system will be used by hundreds of scientific researchers, and will be integrated in the European supercomputer grid. The boost in computational performance, memory capacity and IO performance will enable scientists in the Netherlands to address new scientific grand challenges that were previously out of reach. "This Huygens POWER6 supercomputer marks a new milestone for high performance computing in the Netherlands, and will enable scientists make new exciting discoveries and foster the competitiveness of the Dutch economy," says SARA Managing Director Dr. Anwar Osseyran. "The IBM POWER6 supercomputer is an important prerequisite to establish a so-called 'supernode' in the Netherlands, an international hub of High Performance Computing, connectivity, data storage, software, and application and user support for the scientific and high-tech communities." Scientific research seen as critical to society -- climate prediction, water management and chemistry, for example -- is expected to greatly benefit from the extra computational horsepower. It will quadruple SARA's computing capacity and would rank among the 35 most powerful supercomputers in the world according to the June 2008 list of the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites (www.top500.org). The Huygens supercomputer at SARA is an IBM Power 575 Hydro-Cluster model, which uses a unique water-cooling system that is 33 percent more efficient than traditional air-cooled systems. Heat is removed from the electronics by water-chilled copper plates mounted in direct contact with each POWER6 microprocessor. Huygens is the first Power 575 Hydro-Cluster to run Linux. It is planned to achieve a peak speed of 60 trillion calculations per second (Teraflop/s) when it is completed in August 2008. The system has 3328 4.7 GHz processor cores, a total memory capacity of 15616 GB, and 972 TB disk capacity. Dr. Patrick Aerts, director of NCF: "Since the establishment of NCF, Dutch researchers have been able to access state-of-the-art high-end computing facilities in the Netherlands. The procurement and installation of Huygens reconfirms the Dutch position in Europe, to the benefit of top-level Dutch scientific research." "The new Huygens supercomputer is an important addition to European supercomputer infrastructure," said Harry van Dorenmalen, general manager of IBM Benelux. "Supercomputers are being increasingly recognized as important pillars of scientific advancement and commercial progress for the new century. SARA has taken an important step in keeping the European research community on the leading edge of global technology trends." The Huygens system will be part of the DEISA supercomputing grid (www.deisa.eu), a pan-European HPC service integrating national supercomputing services of eleven leading European HPC centers. Through PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) and with the new Huygens supercomputer, the Netherlands will become an important supernode in the European HPC ecosystem. This is important both for the Dutch scientific community as well as for Dutch society concerned with climate change and water management.