INDUSTRY

Bicycle-powered Computer Simulations Highlight Supercomputing Industry Progress, Demonstrate SiCortex Energy Efficiency: One hundred years ago, Lewis Fry Richardson completed the first true scientific simulation, a two-dimensional model to predict the behavior of a dam under stress. This project involved a team of human “computers” performing slide-rule calculations for a mind-and-finger-numbing period of three years. This week, a team of humans performed a similar simulation, this time by pedaling bicycles to power a supercomputer. The demonstration was held at SC08 in Austin, Texas, by students from Purdue University and seven cyclists from Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop, a venture partially owned by Lance Armstrong. The Purdue students used a SiCortex SC1458 high-productivity computer to complete a three-dimensional dam-break simulation in less than 20 minutes. “Supercomputing has come a long way over the last hundred years,” said SiCortex president and CEO Chris Stone. Another metric of this progress is the computer that performed the simulation. The SiCortex computer is the world’s most energy efficient, producing answers to complex scientific computing challenges as quickly as conventional cluster computers, using a fraction of a cluster’s energy requirement – small enough, in fact, to be powered by bicyclists. The SiCortex computer used in Purdue’s demonstration comprised 648 processors designed specifically for scientific computing, linked together by a warp-speed communication fabric. This optimized design, free of the superfluous chips used by conventional, hot-running clusters, required no special cooling as it ‘broke the dam’. “Indeed, only the cyclists appeared to generate heat,” stated one observer. “Richardson not only pioneered the science of mathematical simulation, he also demonstrated the importance of parallel processing as a means to achieve answers,” said Stone. “The talented Purdue team has appropriately honored Richardson’s achievement by using the world’s most energy-efficient parallel processing system – reducing ‘cycle time’ to a matter of minutes.” With the help of the SiCortex SC1458, Purdue also showcased the “super power” of supercomputers during the highly competitive SC08 Cluster Challenge. The competition, a personification of the great progress made in scientific computing, challenged educational institutions to build a system and then run simulated data in a range of scientific applications, including genetics and designing jet airplanes. Outside of the official competition, the Purdue students hit another supercomputing milestone by being the first team to ever achieve a teraflop of computing after they completed the Cluster Challenge requirements. The results of the Cluster Challenge are expected to be released later today.