INDUSTRY

IBM today announced that the Army Research Laboratory Major Shared Resource Center (ARL MSRC) is adding a massive IBM Supercomputer to its spectrum of high-performance computing (HPC) systems, further cementing the Center as one of the largest computing centers in the Department of Defense and the world. Slated to be among the top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world, the powerful 10 teraflop system (trillion floating-point operations per second) will be used by the DoD researchers to speed the research and development of advanced military systems. "This increase in computing capability will give DoD scientists and engineers the ability to solve complex, mission-critical, physics problems in a timeframe that can provide the data necessary to better assist our staff in solving some of our nation's most complex defense challenges and solutions," said Charles J. Nietubicz, Director of the ARL MSRC. "With the combined supercomputer upgrades, the ARL MSRC also becomes the first and only center in the DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Office providing greater than 10 terabytes (10,000 GB) of memory, making this deployment a major accomplishment for our organization and benefit to the users." The 2,304-CPU cluster will consist of 1186 IBM eServer e325 nodes, each equipped with dual-2.2 GHz AMD Opteron processors, a Myrinet interconnect and will run SUSE Linux. This new system is part of the HPCMO's "Technology Insertion 2004," an initiative to modernize DoD's high performance computing capabilities. "It is now more important than ever that the DoD is equipped with the most sophisticated and agile systems," says Dave Turek, Vice President of Deep Computing for IBM. "IBM worked closely with the DoD to develop a powerful, Linux based, state-of-the-art supercomputing solution that would meet their needs and offer the reliability and ease of management to significantly increase the organization's overall performance in the breakthrough defense technologies." Established in 1996, the ARL MSRC helps the DoD focus and exploit high-performance computing technology for military advantage across the battlespace. This customer-focused, world-class computational facility supports DoD's research and development, science and technology, and test and evaluation communities with some of the world's newest, scalable, parallel computers. These supercomputers feature shared and distributed memory architectures from multiple vendors, including IBM & SGI. Researchers use of the ARL MSRC facilities includes physics based modeling and simulation of more lethal, more survivable weapon systems, exploring new chemical reactions, analyzing sensors and experimental data, and developing new composite materials. IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.