SYSTEMS

44th-fastest system on TOP500 list named for supercomputing pioneer: A privately-owned company, R Systems, Inc., with one of the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputers, is honoring renowned supercomputing and Internet pioneer Larry Smarr by naming the supercomputer “R Smarr.” The most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a private company in the U.S., R Smarr was ranked #44 on the 31st annual TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers at the 23rd annual International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Dresden, Germany. David Johnson, CFO and Principal, notes, “With it's top ranking as a private system, R Smarr generates critical synergies with our consulting subsidiary R People LLC.” The TOP500 list was released June 18 and is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee. “R Systems is a flexible solution provider for companies requiring powerful supercomputing applications,” said Greg Keller, Principal with R Systems. “Our goal is to provide the most flexible supercomputing solutions with the ability to meet the needs of each individual client quickly, efficiently, and with the unique talent to turn on a dime for a customer.” R Systems, with two facilities based at the University of Illinois Research Park, will provide direct supercomputing services to international companies on the R Smarr supercomputer. Operated by a private company, the R Smarr supercomputer is a rarity among the world's fastest supercomputers as 60 percent of systems are installed at research labs and 34 percent at universities. “With the R Smarr supercomputer, our existing relationships with large corporations, and our reputation for excellent customer service, R Systems can provide fast and efficient service to companies,” said Brian Kucic, Vice President of Business Development and a former administrator at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). “R Systems is a business established to provide supercomputing services directly to businesses. We can provide fast, direct, and guaranteed service for companies needing quick and accurate information utilizing the R Smarr supercomputer.” “It is a great honor to have my name on a supercomputer after working on high performance applications for over three decades,” said Larry Smarr. “I am pleased to see this power being made available to small, medium and large businesses by R Systems.” The founding director of NCSA, Professor Smarr will return in August to the University of Illinois campus, the home of NCSA, to visit R Systems and see the powerful R Smarr supercomputer. One of the world's best-known pioneers in the field of supercomputing applications, Professor Larry Smarr is the founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and Harry E. Gruber Professor in the Jacobs School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Smarr is Principal Investigator on the NSF-funded OptIPuter project, Co-PI on the NSF LOOKING ocean observatory prototype, and PI of the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA), funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. As founding director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (1985) and the National Computational Science Alliance (1997), Professor Smarr has driven major contributions to the development of the national information infrastructure: the Internet, the Web, the emerging Grid, collaboratories and scientific visualization. His views have been quoted in Science, Nature, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Business Week and many international media, and is a member of the scientific advisory council of PBS NewsHour. Smarr also gives frequent keynote addresses at professional conferences and to popular audiences. Professor Smarr received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and conducted observational, theoretical and computational based astrophysical sciences research for 15 years before becoming Director of NCSA. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1990 he received the Franklin Institute's Delmer S. Fahrney Gold Medal for Leadership in Science or Technology. He was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and previously served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and the NASA Advisory Council. He served as chair of NASA's Earth System Science and Applications Advisory Committee and was the first chair of the newly formed NASA Science Advisory Council. In 2006 he was presented with the ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award and received the IEEE Computer Society's Tsutomu Kanai Award for distributed computing systems achievements. Facts and Figures about the R Smarr Supercomputer Site: R Systems System: Family Dell Cloud Computing (DCS) System: Model Dell Cloud Computing (DCS) Computer: Dell DCS CS23-SH, QC HT 2.8 GHz, Infiniband Vendor: Dell Installation Year: 2008 Operating System: Linux Memory: 4608 GB Interconnect: Infiniband DDR Processor: Intel EM64T Xeon E54xx (Harpertown) 2800 MHz (11.2 GFlops)