INDUSTRY

SilverStorm Technologies today announced that the Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP) has deployed its 9240 InfiniBand switch gateway platform as the interconnect backbone for its newest high performance cluster computing network. The new cluster enables IFP to utilize a common pool of computing resources to run multiple oil and gas industry applications over a single interconnect infrastructure. The new network improves oil and gas research application performance while simultaneously reducing data center operational costs. IFP is the world's second largest process licensor in refining and petrochemicals (via its subsidiary Axens), and is an internationally recognized center of excellence in exploration and production. Powered by nearly 430 processors (2 TFlops) interconnected through a single 288-port 9240 SilverStorm InfiniBand switch, the high performance cluster computing network is designed to significantly improve the performance of applications that are used to develop the knowledge and technologies of the three fundamental oil and gas chain fields: exploration-production, refining-petrochemicals and engines-fuels. "We are very happy to achieve the first milestone of our HPC vision: to access all our needs on a single Linux cluster, less than three years after replacing our previous vector platforms," said Stephane Requena, HPC architect, IFP. "This cluster is made up of heterogeneous nodes (based on single and dual core AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon and Itanium or IBM Power5 nodes) running different flavours of Linux, but controlled by a single large SilverStorm InfiniBand switch, accessing an IBM GPFS parallel file system, and orchestrated by Platform Computing LSF HPC solution." "This announcement is a reflection of SilverStorm's continued leadership in providing the oil and gas marketplace a high performance computing interconnect solution to drive competitive advantage," said Douglas Besselman, EMEA Sales Director, SilverStorm Technologies. "Companies such as IFP are turning to SilverStorm's InfiniBand solutions to improve application performance while reducing operating and infrastructure costs." "Thanks to the solutions provided by SilverStorm in our high performance computing facilities, we are now able to address new challenges in the oil and gas industry, such as improving oil recovery, implementing new design of catalysts, reducing car engine pollution, developing new fuels using biomass or hydrogen, or achieving carbon dioxide sequestration," said Jacqueline Lecourtier, Scientific Director, IFP.