INDUSTRY

DURHAM, UK -- Esteem Systems plc, one of the UK’s leading IT systems solutions providers, has designed and installed a new IT system for Durham University’s Physics Department that will enable the reconstruction of the universe. Officially launched by Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, the ‘supercomputer’ – which is the largest of its type in academic research in the UK – will be used to extract data from billions of astronomical observations, and analyse how galaxies and solar systems have evolved. With the help of the ‘supercomputer’, which consists of a Sun Microsystems Sun Fire 6800 and a cluster of 64 Sun Microsystems Sun Blade 1000s, researchers at the University hope to be able to trace events right back to the Big Bang. With the power to simulate virtual universes, the £1.4m investment will set new standards in scientific research and maintain Durham’s reputation as the leading centre for research into the origin and evolution of the universe. Esteem was selected to support Durham University following a competitive tender process whereby the company’s status as one of Sun’s premier Academic Partners, and its ability to deliver a bespoke IT solution in line with the University’s requirements, made it the natural choice. Designed to perform in data centre environments, the recommended Sun Fire 6800 server provides mainframe capabilities plus midframe availability and affordability. The server features 24 UltraSPARC™ III processors and 48 gigabytes of memory. Ideal for server consolidation, data warehousing and large databases, the Sun Fire is the perfect storage solution to fulfil Durham’s data management requirements. In addition to the Sun Fire, Esteem prescribed a high performance 128 CPU cluster consisting of 64 Sun Blade 1000s, to cope with the processing power required by Durham University. Run on two 750-MHz UltraSPARC-III CPUs, each of the Sun Blades provides; outstanding flexibility in memory; high processing speed and bandwidth; high end graphics and a capacity of 8-GB RAM. The cluster allows arithmetic calculations to be completed at the incredible rate of 456 billion operations per second. For further information visit www.dur.ac.uk/ or www.esteem.co.uk/