Supercomputers

The Supercomputing Institute has continued the strong tradition of providing University of Minnesota researchers with leading-edge, high-performance computing technologies and diversified programs that complement these technologies. In April 2000, the WinterHawk nodes were upgraded to WinterHawk+ technology. The Institute’s IBM SP supercomputer currently comprises 390 processors with 663 GB of memory. It consists of 79 four-processor and 3 two-processor WinterHawk+ nodes with 391 GB of memory and 17 four-processor NightHawk nodes with 272 GB of memory. The NightHawk nodes utilize the 222 MHz Power3 processors and WinterHawk+ nodes utilize the 375 MHz Power3+ processor. In addition, the Institute has a 16-processor Silvernode IBM SP with 12 GB of memory. The Silvernode SP utilizes the 332 MHz PowerPC 604e processor. The IBM supercomputer resources are available in coordination with the IBM Shared University Research (SUR) partnership.

In May 2001, the Supercomputing Institute installed two 96-processor SGI Origin 3800s. Each SGI Origin 3800 has 144 GB of memory. These supercomputers utilize 500 MHz R14000 processors. The Institute also offers access to a 12-processor SGI Origin 2000 with 22 GB of memory.

In March 2002, the Supercomputing Institute purchased an IBM pSeries 690 (Regatta). This computer contains eight 1.3 GHz processors and has 16 GB of memory. In August 2002, this system will be upgraded to two Regattas. One will have 32 processors with 64 GB of memory, the other will have 24 processors and 24 GB of memory. These machines will be connected together using the SP Switch2.

The total amount of disk available to users of the IBM SP systems is 4.5 terabytes. The total amount of disk available to users of the SGI Origin 2000 systems is currently 3.0 terabytes.

The Institute recently added a Linux Cluster consisting of 82 2-processor Netfinity nodes from IBM. Of these 82 nodes, 76 are available for computation, 5 are file servers, and one node is for interactive use. 17 of these nodes have two 733 MHx Intel Pentium III processors sharing 1 GB of memory. The remaining nodes have two 1.26 GHz Pentium III processors sharing 3.25 GB of memory. The nodes are connected together using Fast Ethernet and Myrinet.

The Supercomputing Institute recently joined the Digital Technology Center, and the supercomputing resources have moved to the Supercomputing Institute’s new facilities on the East Bank of the Minneapolis Campus.

These IBM and SGI supercomputers offer the Supercomputing Institute’s researchers access to state-of-the-art, high-performance computing technology. In addition, the Supercomputing Institute is continuing its commitment to a diversified array of computing laboratories, collaborations, and programs. These include the Basic Sciences Computing Laboratory, the Computational Genetics Laboratory, the Digital Technology Computational Biology Laboratory, the Scientific Development and Visualization Laboratory, the Medicinal Chemistry-Supercomputing Institute Visualization/ Workstation Laboratory, and interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs in Scientific Computing and Computational Neuroscience.

The major supercomputing resource program and long-term planning at the Institute are guided by the Institute’s Planning Committee.

Planning Committee

Donald Truhlar, Supercomputing Institute Director, Chemistry, Chemical Physics, and Scientific Computation, chair

Graham Candler, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics and Scientific Computation

James Chelikowsky, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Scientific Computation

Jiali Gao, Chemistry and Scientific Computation

Vipin Kumar, Computer Science and Engineering and Scientific Computation

David Lilja, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Alon V. McCormick, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Douglas Ohlendorf, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics

Yousef Saad, Computer Science and Engineering and Scientific Computation

George Wilcox, Neuroscience and Scientific Computation