University of Toronto, IBM to Build Canada's Most Powerful Supercomputer

IBM (News - Alert) and the SciNet Consortium of the University of Toronto say they’ve agreed to build Canada’s most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputer, the first system to use future Intel (News - Alert) Nehalem processor families, IBM officials said.

 

The supercomputer can perform 360 trillion calculations per second, according to the software giant. Officials from IBM describe it as an innovative hybrid system built on the company’s iDataPlex system and advanced POWER6 architecture. The systems can work together or independently and are connected to a massive five-petabyte storage complex, according to the company.

 

The supercomputer can run a wide range of software at a high level of performance. It is expected to rank among the top-20 fastest supercomputers in the world, 30 times faster than the peak performance of Canada’s current largest research system. It also represents the second-largest system ever built on a university campus, and the largest supercomputer outside the United States, IBM said.

 

IBM says its iDataPlex system holds twice as many processors per unit as standard systems and is entirely water-cooled. More than 4,000 servers will be linked together in this new facility. This includes one of the world’s largest POWER6 clusters and Intel x86-based clusters, said IBM.

 

“A system this complex could only be designed by bringing together the best minds from the University of Toronto and IBM,” said Chris Pratt, an executive of strategic initiatives at IBM Canada. “This is a tremendous example of public and private collaboration that will benefit the Canadian research community for many years to come.”

“The University of Toronto has partnered with IBM to become one of the world’s premier computational research institutions – a collaboration that will attract researchers from around the world,” said Richard Peltier, scientific director of SciNet and director of the Center for Global Change Science.

 

The supercomputer will enhance SciNet’s ongoing research projects in aerospace, astrophysics, bioinformatics, chemical physics, climate change prediction, medical imaging and the global ATLAS project, according to the consortium.

 

Richard Peltier currently researches the impacts of greenhouse gas-induced global warming. The SciNet facility also will focus on analyzing high-resolution global models to predict future risks, such as the accelerating decrease in Arctic sea ice. An early project will be the construction of regional climate change predictions for the Province of Ontario and Great Lakes watershed region.

The computing power and storage capacity of the supercomputer will contribute to the data analysis of research that explores the modern scientific mystery of why matter has mass and what constitutes the mass of the universe, officials said.