Seattle WA.- Oslo - 15. November 2011
Numascale, IBM and the University of Oslo together in European Prototype for Emerging Technology
Building Large Shared Memory System using NumaConnect Adapters and IBM x3755 Servers for Big Data Research
The University of Oslo (UiO), Numascale and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have signed an agreement for a prototype where the Numascale technology will be tested on a large scale for advanced research computation. Funded by the Norwegian Research Council, UiO and Framework Programme 7 through the first PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) implementation phase project, the project will evaluate NumaConnect for future use in pan-European Research Infrastructure. As part of the pilot program, IBM is providing the server infrastructure along with deep HPC competence across key functions and Gridcore, a joint partner of Numascale and IBM, will build the new advanced computing resource.
The technology from Numascale enables the use of commodity servers to build scalable computer systems, which share all processor, memory and I/O resources under one operating system. The NumaConnect Adapter cards and fabric connects the IBM x3755 servers to a single image ccNUMA system. This approach is more cost efficient than alternative ways of building large shared memory systems, and much easier to deploy and use than standard clusters.
“We believe the NumaConnect technology will revolutionize the way to perform advanced computation, whether in academic research or in the industry at large. PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a perfect framework for this collaborative effort to evaluate NumaConnect and we are very proud to work with the University of Oslo, IBM and their partners in this effort,” says CEO Kare Lochsen of Numascale.
From life science, to global warming and the mysteries of the universe
NumaConnect is especially suitable for tasks that require large memory or for problems consisting of tightly coupled elements. These type of problems are common within a broad set of applications including important research areas at UiO as life sciences, climate research and solar physics. The availability of a system with one large shared memory, makes it easier for the researchers to program their models without having to partition their problems, like they do today using MPI and clusters.
“The NumaConnect technology allows us to attack more research problems than we can by using existing technology.” says Hans Eide, Manager of Scientific Computing at USIT, University Center for Information Technology at UiO.
“IBM sees possibilities for this technology in several areas, and we are proud to support the University of Oslo with our deep expertise in High Performance Computing and advanced server technology,” says Erling Weibust, IBM’s HPC expert.
European Collaboration
This project is being followed closely both from the European Commission and the Norwegian Research Council. The funding for PRACE implementation phase projects comes from the EU’s 7th Framework Programme, and the mission of the PRACE RI (Research Infrastructure) is to enable high impact European scientific discovery and engineering research and development across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society.. PRACE RI has 21 member countries whose representative organizations are creating a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure, providing access to computing and data management resources and services for large-scale scientific and engineering applications at the highest performance level.
The prototype NumaConnect system to be installed at the University of Oslo is part of a work-package within PRACE 1st Implementation Phase (1IP) project to assess emerging technologies on the road to exascale systems. Several high competence institutions within the PRACE project are partners in the project to assess the Numascale technology. These are
- University of Oslo Center for Information Technology (USIT), Norway
- Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET)
- Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC), Finland
- Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ), Germany
- Computation based Science and Technology Research Centre (CaSToRC),The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus
- Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC), Poland
“This NUMAcluster will be an attractive resource for scientists as part of the PRACE research infrastructure, when it becomes available in the pilot phase and the new technology is thoroughly tested, says Jacko Koster, CEO of UNINETT Sigma, administrator of the Norwegian National Infrastructure for High Performance Computing (NOTUR)”.
Contact information
Hans A. Eide, UiO, cell phone +47 45465804, email:
Jon Snilsberg, Numascale, cell phone +47 92203469, email:
Erling Weibust, IBM, cell phone +46 70 7934139, email:
Tom Suiter, IBM Media Relations, cell phone 415-730-6521, email:
Demonstrations available at Booth #1023
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About University of Oslo (UiO) and USIT
The Research Computing Services group (RCS) within USIT (University Center for Information Technology) is a competence-focused resource for researchers both inside and outside the University of Oslo. The RCS provides HPC infrastructure and high-level research and technical competence, in order to efficiently translate research problems into solutions with the aid of a wide range of IT tools.
The responsibilities of the RCS include performing the duties for UiO in national and international HPC and e-science projects. UiO is a partner in the Notur II project (2005-2014), which provides the Norwegian infrastructure for High-Performance Computing. UiO is through RCS participating in international research and grid activities, such as the World-wide LHC Computation Grid (WLGC) and the Nordic distributed Tier-1 site, PRACE, and EGI.
About Numascale
With offices in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., Numascale’s groundbreaking NumaConnect interconnect technology enables scalable server computer systems to be built at cluster prices. NumaConnect allows high-volume manufactured server boards to be used as building blocks for systems with features that are only found in the high-end enterprise servers. NumaConnect includes full support for virtualization of processing, memory, and I/O resources, and can be used with standard operating systems.
About IBM
For more information on IBM, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/
About Gridcore
Founded in 2002, and with offices in Sweden, Norway, Germany and USA., Gridcore is a leading provider of solutions for Technical and Scientific Computing. With the comprehensive software stack Gompute, and the Gompute On-demand service, we are simplifying our customers usage of High Performance Computing resources, delivering secure private, public or hybrid cloud computing solutions.
http://www.gridcore.se and http://www.gompute.com
About PRACE
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI) provides a persistent world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry. The PRACE leadership systems form the apex of the performance pyramid and are well integrated into the European HPC ecosystem. PRACE Implementation Phase project receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements n° RI-261557 and n° RI-283493.
