INDUSTRY

ClusterVision are pleased to announce their successful completion of the UK's largest Intel Xeon EM64T cluster at the University of Lancaster's Department of Physics. The high performance cluster comprises both compute and storage elements as required by the University of Lancaster as a Tier 2 DataGrid Site in the UK. It is based on the Intel Xeon EM64T processor, Intel's new flagship server processor which is fully compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. The 209 dual processor compute servers or "nodes" are managed by two master nodes. Access to the storage is provided by 7 I/O servers and 14 RAID units, which provide a massive total of 84TB of storage space. Part of the new ClusterVision compute cluster at the University of Lancaster. As part of the EU EGEE and CERN LHC Computing Grid projects, the cluster's 418 processors will be used to analyse the millions of bytes of data generated by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which are fundamental to extending our understanding of the events immediately following the "Big Bang" and the creation of matter. Dr Roger Jones from Lancaster University's Department of Physics and a member of the ATLAS experiment led the project: "Lancaster required powerful computing combined with price performance and support in order to meet the computing challenges even in the preparation phase of the Large Hadron Collider. ClusterVision were selected out of a competitive field, and have worked closely with us on the commissioning of the system. They also provided the first 84TB phase of the large data store that will be required." The procurement was one of a series of Science Research Investment Fund collaborative tendering exercises funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The lead procurement body in this case was Purchasing & Supply Services at Heriot-Watt University (http://www.HE-Purchasing.ac.uk). On completion of the project, Dr Peter Love, a Research Associate at the Lancaster Department of Physics and closely involved with the installation was happy to state that ClusterVision had performed "a very good job with very thorough burn-in tests." "Intel is pleased to be associated with the University of Lancaster and the work of Dr Roger Jones and Dr Peter Love in harnessing its Intel Xeon processor-based cluster technology as a resource for progressing output from the EU EGEE Project. Intel support further understanding across various scientific and research communities and have been impressed with the delivery of this project by ClusterVision", commented Sean McGuire, Head of Education & Research, Intel UK.