Kyoto University in Japan just placed a new order for a supercomputer to replace the existing aging unit. The new machine will contain 6,656 AMD Opteron cores on 1,664 quad-core processors housed in 416 Fujitsu HX600 computers with a total of 800TB of storage space. To supplement this system, there will be a separate multiprocessing cluster containing 7 Sparc enterprise Unix servers with 1TB of RAM. Together it is thought the new machine will perform well enough to sit in the top 20 most powerful computers.With the advancements in power management technology, the new machine will consume the same amount of power as the old supercomputer it is replacing. When you consider the new unit is 7-times more powerful, with the capability to perform 61.2 Tflops, it is clearly a significant improvement.
Fujitsu has said the new machine will use around 600 Kilowatts of power, or 102 Mflops per watt. Kyoto University plans to use the new machine for the following:
* Scientific computations
* Ultra-large archive searches
* Computer graphics
* Grid technology research in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Tsukuba
* A range of other new areas of research
Hiroshi Nakashima, Professor at Kyoto University's Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, commented:
This new supercomputer system upgrade represents a significant departure from our past procurement practices. This time we laid out the basic concept of the new supercomputer along with general specifications based on the T2K Open Supercomputer Specification jointly created with the University of Tokyo and University of Tsukuba, and we asked vendors to develop systems and submit proposals to meet our requirements. In this sense, I think it was more difficult this time to develop systems proposals that met our requirements, but this HX600 cluster exceeds our baseline requirements for performance and functionality, so we're very pleased with the outcome. The SPARC Enterprise M9000 sub-system will be able to directly utilize our existing software assets, and the high-capacity storage system can also be configured to exceed our base requirements.
Fujitsu has said the new machine will use around 600 Kilowatts of power, or 102 Mflops per watt. Kyoto University plans to use the new machine for the following:
* Scientific computations
* Ultra-large archive searches
* Computer graphics
* Grid technology research in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Tsukuba
* A range of other new areas of research
Hiroshi Nakashima, Professor at Kyoto University's Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, commented:
This new supercomputer system upgrade represents a significant departure from our past procurement practices. This time we laid out the basic concept of the new supercomputer along with general specifications based on the T2K Open Supercomputer Specification jointly created with the University of Tokyo and University of Tsukuba, and we asked vendors to develop systems and submit proposals to meet our requirements. In this sense, I think it was more difficult this time to develop systems proposals that met our requirements, but this HX600 cluster exceeds our baseline requirements for performance and functionality, so we're very pleased with the outcome. The SPARC Enterprise M9000 sub-system will be able to directly utilize our existing software assets, and the high-capacity storage system can also be configured to exceed our base requirements.