The Center for Mathematical Modeling of the FCFM – U. de Chile acquired a computer IBM iDataPlex that possesses 528 cores of calculation, besides other 80 of support. Altogether it is equivalent approximately to 1700 computers of personal use.
“It is expects this equipment supports the activities that taking place in the country regarding to science of border and create a network of cooperation that should use the high performance computing to deliver a strategic benefit to the Chilean industrial sector, in order to make it more competitive,” explains the engineer Claudio Baeza of the Laboratory High Performance Computing and Grid of the CMM and one of the managers of the purchase of the new cluster.
Because it has a parallel file system or distributed avoid bottlenecks when, for example, want to process large images such as the astronomical. “With other computers, this jam is produced because all the nodes trying to extract information of one. Although the machines have had enough computing power, are going to lose more time trying to read the file of the disc, that in computing. Our new cluster will work with a parallel file system and will rely on a communication by InfiniBand, a bandwidth added of 80 Gbps, which has a very low latency and in which all the nodes can be connected among them, which make this team much more efficient.”, says Baeza.
With an investment over than 600 thousand dollars, this cluster will be able to be used by other groups of research of the university who required high computing power. In addition specialists in nanotechnology of the Unversidad de Santiago and of physical oceanography of Universidad de Concepción, among others, have proved be interested in using the new equipment. It is important to indicate that the equipment will be made available to the national scienftific community need to use the high performance computing there are invited the interested parties to contact Claudio Baeza (cbaeza@dim.uchile.cl) for more information.
The acquisition of this machine was a major human, technical and economical effort of CMM, as well as IBM and S&A Consultores. “The latter company was the one that made the sale through a framework agreement and in this process also was attended by countries like Venezuela and Brazil in the assembly of this solution”, said Ariel Buschel from S&A Consultores.
Although once in functioning it will be known in how much decrease the processes that nowadays are executed in the former cluster of the CMM, Baeza hopes that the new computer will be between 2,5 and 25 times faster.
| Specification sheet of the IDataPlex
• 528 cores of calculation, 66 nodes Intel Xeon X5550 |
