Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A new supercomputer at Mississippi State University can perform more than 10 trillion calculations per second at its peak and is expected to rank among the 100 most powerful computers in the world.
MSU's High Performance Computing Collaboratory has installed a 2,048 processor computing cluster, named "Raptor," which is more than four times faster than the most powerful system currently housed at the site, an IBM model called "Maverick."
"It is anticipated that this computer will be among the 100 most powerful computers in the world when the next Top 500 Supercomputer Sites list is released next month by the University of Tennessee and the University of Mannheim (Germany)," said Colin Scanes, MSU's vice president for research and economic development.
"The system also likely will be among the 15 most powerful computers at any university in the country," he added.
The new high-performance computing cluster--which connects 512 smaller computers together--uses servers made by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems Inc. Each of the model X2200 M2 servers has two Opteron 2218 processors manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Because existing computers currently used by HPC2 are operating at capacity, the Raptor is expected to greatly strengthen the MSU research unit's efforts in solving problems related to automotive crash simulations, weather and ocean modeling, missile aerodynamics, and the design of more efficient jet engines.
"The computational capability of this new system is sometimes hard to grasp," said Trey Breckenridge, high performance computing resources and operations administrator at HPC2.
"If you sat down with a pencil and paper, and began doing one long-division problem per second, it would take you almost 340,000 years to accomplish what this system can do in a single second," he said.
The HPC2--formerly called ERC--is a coalition of member centers and groups that share a common core objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in computational science and engineering. This is achieved through high-performance computing; a common research approach that embraces a multi-disciplinary, team-oriented concept; and a commitment to a full partnership between education, research and service.
The collaboratory's mission is to serve the university, state and nation through excellence in computational science and engineering.
The five research units that make up HPC2 are the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Center for Computational Sciences, Center for Department of Defense Programming Environment and Training, Computational Simulation and Design Center, and the GeoResources Institute.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Congressman Chip Pickering, R-Miss., joined about 300 MSU faculty, staff and supporters Aug. 31 at a ceremony officially opening a new 28,000-square-foot expanded HPC2 facility at its site in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park immediately north of the main campus.
"We're in a world economy that is driven by innovation through technology," Barbour said. "Many people don't know that we have access to phenomenal amounts of computer technology that is allowing Mississippi to be competitive in the global marketplace. In fact, it's helping drive America's competitiveness."
David Shaw, HPC2 operations board chair and director of the GeoResources Institute, said the new Raptor supercomputer system--coupled with the recent facility expansion and rapid growth of the unit's research programs--"will be an invaluable asset to our researchers and should be a point of pride for the state of Mississippi."
For more information, contact Roger Smith at (662) 325-3625 or roger@hpc.msstate.edu. Visit the HPC2 Web site at www.hpc.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.