APPLICATIONS

eXludus Technologies today announced that the University of Cambridge has ordered the company’s new Grid Optimizer suite following a demonstration in which the software increased cluster throughput by more than 300% on NCBI-BLAST. The university’s Dell cluster currently ranks number 20 on the list of the world’s Top 500 supercomputers. According to Dr. Paul Calleja, director of the Cambridge High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF), "We have selected best of breed software solutions that in combination deliver world class throughput performance, fully exploiting the underlying power of our hardware technologies. We are impressed by the innovation that eXludus brings to our capabilities at the Cambridge HPCF, including the delivery of maximum efficiency coordinated with workload schedulers via their SchedOpt component. Also for I/O limited jobs the eXludus software can dramatically increase throughput; we have seen throughput increases of over 300% on certain codes." Current workload managers are not designed for multi-core clusters, which require a more aggressive tuning strategy. SchedOpt was specifically engineered to provide the dynamism and fast reaction times needed for high performance in the emerging world of multi-core and many-core clusters. SchedOpt employs an innovative, real-time optimization algorithm that automatically improves process scheduling. SchedOpt requires no modification to applications and can be used alongside existing workload managers. SchedOpt is applicable across a wide range of applications and can provide significant performance benefits for single node systems, as well as for clusters or Grids. The new software will be available as a standalone module or as part of the Grid Optimizer suite, during April 2007. Grid Optimizer is a suite of cluster and Grid optimization products designed to drive computational throughput to new heights. To learn more about SchedOpt, go to its Web site. "eXludus Technologies are delighted to be delivering world class throughput performance at the progressive and large scale Cambridge University HPCF," said Dr. Philip Bull, eXludus director of sales EMEA. "Together we are advancing the boundaries of high productivity computing at this extremely powerful and demanding centre. We are helping to ensure that the fastest academic system in the UK squeezes out every drop of workload throughput in favour of its extensive user base." The Cambridge University High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) today provides over 18 teraflops of sustained performance across its large scale Dell compute cluster. The system ranks at number 20 in the Top 500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The centre is used by a wide range of academic departments for everything from engineering design, computational chemistry & physics to life sciences research and mathematical modeling. The centre's website (under construction) is at its Web site.