INDUSTRY

Dublin, Ireland-based Trinity College has deployed an IBM xSeries clustered supercomputer with Voltaire grid interconnect to advance its computational science and research initiatives. The 356-node cluster is the largest IBM-powered InfiniBand cluster deployed to date. The Trinity supercomputer will be used to conduct research in a variety of areas that include the physical sciences, biomolecular sciences and computer science. The IBM supercomputer uses the Voltaire ISR 9288, a 288 port multi-service switch for its high bandwidth, low latency cluster interconnect. Voltaire multi-service switches offer integrated InfiniBand, GbE and Fibre Channel connectivity and are deployed successfully in some of the world's largest supercomputers and grids. "This new supercomputer will contribute to important progress in computational science in Ireland," said Dr. Graeme Watson, Director of the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing. "Interconnecting the IBM platforms with Voltaire's 288 port InfiniBand switches gives us a high-performance, scalable supercomputer that allows us to tackle larger and more complex simulations than have been possible before. This technology brings greater efficiencies to the Centre which will benefit areas such as cancer research, new drug design and vaccines, the development of pollution controls and new electronic devices." The supercomputer, with an expected peak performance of 3.4 teraflops, consists of 356 IBM eServer model 326 servers with dual AMD model 250 Opteron processors and 10 Gbps InfiniBand connectivity from Voltaire. The system also uses IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS), a high-performance shared disk file system that provides fast data access from all of the nodes in the cluster. "Using industry standard platforms and technologies, this powerful cluster is poised to help further the advancement of science and computer technology," said Diana Grimmer, Worldwide Linux Product Marketing Manager, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "We are delighted to work with InfiniBand solution providers like Voltaire to provide the kind of quality and performance required to help mutual clients in various industries secure and grow their businesses." "Trinity College Dublin needed a high performance, scalable, yet affordable solution to accelerate important research and scientific discoveries," said John Asher, vice president of European sales, Voltaire. "We are very pleased that the college selected Voltaire and IBM to meet these requirements." The IBM supercomputer with Voltaire grid interconnect was chosen by Trinity College for the Institute for Information Technology and Advanced Computing at TCD - a EUR 9m research project tackling some of the largest computational science challenges in the world. The selection was made based on the solution's superior price/performance.