New Zealand Local Weather Forum
Weather Discussion => Hardware Software and Technology => Media => Topic started by: TokWW on May 19, 2012, 06:54:23 PM
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NIWA has installed one of the world's most powerful supercomputers at Greta Point in Wellington.
Two videos I just found on TVNZ and at NIWA - bound to be more articles and news about it - I knew they had a new SC arrived last year but am interested to read more about it. Two overlapping videos here: (Michael Uddstrom is a Senior Principle Scientist for NIWA.)
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/super-computer-has-niwa-scientists-buzzing-3666493/video?vid=3669666
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/super-computer-has-niwa-scientists-buzzing-3666493/video?vid=3666140
These are both interesting and informative.
FitzRoy IBM Power 575
34 Trillion calcs per second. 100 times more powerful than the old one and of 7,000 laptops!.
19 Tonnes and $13,000,000. Useful for daily weather prediction at a more detailed finer grid pattern. It will also be used for diagnosing medical issues and be used by NZ Universities on projects.
Technical Specifications: http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-services/hpcf/specs
Hardware
IBM p575/p6 supercomputer with 56 POWER6, 32 way 4.7 GHz nodes for a total of 1792 processors and 5.4 terabytes of memory;
Capable of performing up to 34 trillion (million million) calculations per second
The bandwidth within each 32 way node is as high as 80 GB/s. The nodes can communicate with each other at 16 GB/s per connection in each direction with a latency of around 4μs (MPI) for short messages.
0.5 petabytes of useable disk storage on 740 disks in an IBM DCS9900 storage array;
Two IBM TS3500 Automatic Tape Libraries, with 12 LTO-5 drives and each capable of storing 2.5 Petabytes of data. One tape library will be for disaster recovery, and will contain copies of all data on the primary tape library;
Eight p520/p6 servers for HPC Management, GPFS (General Parallel File System), and TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) functions; and
One BladeCenter with 96 Xeon 2.53 GHz processors and 384 Gigabytes of memory for pre- and post- processing tasks.
Physical Infrastructure
370 kW to run the system;
Another 120 kW for cooling, using chilled water (which removes around 70% of the heat) and air (which removes the rest of the heat);
Weight: 12.6 tonnes, including water.
Search here... http://www.niwa.co.nz/search/apachesolr_search/fitzroy
http://www.niwa.co.nz/video/fitzroy-niwas-new-supercomputer
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news/supercomputer-will-prepare-future-solving-tomorrows-problems-today
http://www.niwa.co.nz/video/fitzroy-construction-timelapse (Building of the new computer)