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Southampton’s Supercomputer UK Academia’s Greenest
The University of Southampton’s new supercomputer, live from January 2010, is named UK academia’s ‘greenest’ computer in this year’s Green500 List, a ranking of the World’s most energy-efficient supercomputers.
The Green500 List also ranks the supercomputer as the second most energy-efficient UK-based supercomputer overall – covering both academia and commercial markets.
Custom-designed and built by HPC and storage integrator OCF and using IBM’s iDataPlex server technology and running Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 software, the supercomputer uses just 1 watt of power to generate speeds in excess 299.52 megaflops of performance.
The new supercomputer will be in use by leading-edge researchers across the University to make highly complex computations in fields ranging from cancer research to climate change.
Professor Philip Nelson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, comments: "It's good to know that the University of Southampton not only has one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but also one of the greenest. While our researchers are investigating new responses to climate change, designing new transport systems and exploring the origins of life on earth, it's important that we limit our impact on the planet."
“Obtaining significant supercomputer processing performance, whilst at the same time keeping an eye on energy consumption and the related costs has become a primary challenge for many organisations investing in a supercomputer,” says Barry Evans, technical director, OCF plc. “Using innovative technologies from companies such as IBM is key to making those energy consumption cost reductions happen.
By way of example, we chose to implement IBM’s iDataPlex technology because of its innovative design, which reduces the number of fans and power supplies needed to cool and power the components of the supercomputer. It also utilizes an in-built water cooling system which is incredibly energy efficient. ‘Green’ can deliver lower energy costs.”
"IBM is actively engaged with universities like Southampton throughout the world working to put the latest technology into the hands of leading researchers," said Ben Warwick, IBM. "As we push supercomputers to new heights of performance, IBM is committed to ensuring that energy efficiency keeps pace. Energy efficiency - including performance per watt for the most computationally demanding workloads - is a core design principle in developing IBM systems."
About the supercomputer
• This week, the University of Southampton supercomputer was also ranked 74th in the Top500 List, a worldwide list of the 500 most powerful computer systems.
• The supercomputer is the first public sector use of IBM’s System x™ iDataPlex™ servers in the UK and the largest of its kind in Europe.
• The innovative, half-depth form factor reduces the airflow required across the components, lowering the power needed for cooling, whilst providing twice the number of servers in the same space as a standard 42u rack.
• Rear door of iDataPlex has built-in heat exchanger which uses water to cool the expelled heat before it enters the data centre, making it more environmentally-friendly to use than standard air conditioning alone.
• Equivalent of 26 normal racks; 1000 nodes; 2000 Intel Quad Core Processors = 8000 cores; 120 TB storage using IBM DS4700
• It uses Cluster Resources Adaptive HPC Suite to provide for, on demand, a mixed Linux and Windows workload.
