GPU Computing cluster PLX:
the fastest (and efficient) Supercomputer available
to Italian industrial and public researchers today
Casalecchio di Reno, Italy -- 22/09/2011 -The GPU Computing cluster recently introduced in Italy by SuperComputing Solutions - SCS S.r.l - Cineca is the fastest supercomputer available to Italian industrial and public research today, ranked at the 54th position in the top500, the list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. It is also one of the most efficient systems in term of Mflops/Watt according to the June'11 Top500 green list.
The PLX GPU-computing cluster, based on 274 IBM iDataPlex nodes equipped with 528 NVIDIA Tesla M2070 plus 20 NVIDIA Tesla M2070Q GPUs provides access to large-scale GPU computing to industry and scientific world. This system is used to optimize applications targeted at hybrid architectures, leveraging software applications in the fields of computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, and geophysics. The computing system runs daily weather forecast simulations and will also be used to test new cloud computing and remote visualization services. Moreover, it is available to European researchers as a Tier-1 system of the PRACE infrastructure.
PLX is in line with Cineca and SCS nature of prime innovators and persistent presidia of innovative technology to provide opportunity for industries to experiments and access solutions supporting and enabling the processes of products development.
The system represents an effort to explore and make available a diversified offer to the research community in terms of computational resources, since many-core architectures like GPUs are proving to be an interesting field of exploration in the race to new levels of performance within an affordable power envelope.
Technical References
The IBM iDataPlex Cluster Solution equipped by dx360M3 nodes efficaciously integrates NVIDIA M2070 GPUs cards for achieving large computing capabilities in a single rack. PLX is able to provide 142TFLOPs on HPL, it is ranked 54th in the June'11 Top500 list and 5th in the June’11 Green500 list.
The PLX cluster is based on 274 IBM iDataPlex M3 server nodes, each with two NVIDIA Tesla M2070 GPUs, two Intel Westmere sockets and 48 TB of main memory storage. Another 10 IBM iDataPlex M3 server nodes come each with two NVIDIA Tesla M2070Q GPUs, addressing computational and remote visualization tasks. IBM DataPlex is a highly scalable system that can lower power, cooling and space requirements.
About CINECA (www.cineca.it/en)
Cineca is a non profit Consortium, made up of 50 Italian universities, two National Research Centers and the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). It is the largest Italian computing centre, operating in the technological transfer sector through high performance scientific computing, the management and development of networks and web based services, and the development of complex information systems for treating large amounts of data.
Cineca represents Italy in the PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI), and participates in the promotion, development and exploitation of advanced HPC technologies for research.
About SuperComputing Solutions – SCS S.r.l.
(www.cineca.it/page/scs)
SCS S.r.l. is a limited liability company, Public-private partnership between Cineca and private partners in Italy, for added value service and technology transfer activities in the domain of HPC. SCS is active since 2003 with an average yearly budget in excess of Euro 2 millions and a staff of about fifteen specialists highly skilled in the fields of engineering and computational physics.
About IBM
For more information about IBM high performance computing and HPC cloud offerings, visit http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/.
AboutNVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999. Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from tablets and portable media players to notebooks and workstations. NVIDIA's expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. The Company holds more than 1,800 patents worldwide, including ones covering designs and insights that are essential to modern computing. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.
Cineca Press Office
Patrizia Coluccia
Email:
Ph: 338 5366421