HPC in the Cloud: New Supercomputer at PNNL Advances DOE Mission

Dedicated to covering high-end cloud computing
in science, industry and the datacenter

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

January 17, 2012

New Supercomputer at PNNL Advances DOE Mission

Energy storage, power grid development benefiting from 162-Teraflop system

RICHLAND, Wash., Jan. 17 – A new, 162-Teraflop peak supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is helping scientists do more complex, advanced research in areas such energy storage and future power grid development. It also uses less energy than similar computers because of its unique, water-fed cooling system.

With the ability to compute as fast as about 20,000 typical personal computers combined, the Olympus supercomputer is the first large-scale computer exclusively available to PNNL researchers and their collaborators.

"Taking a cue from Washington state's Mount Olympus, this computer is enabling PNNL scientists to reach new scientific heights — and at a low cost," said Kevin Regimbal, director of the new PNNL Institutional Computing program. "PNNL has pooled its resources in a tough economy to build the best possible computational resource that will enable new scientific discoveries."

Before, PNNL research staff purchased smaller computer systems for their specific research project needs, but the size and power of those systems were limited to individual project budgets. Now PNNL research projects can use Olympus.

"PNNL is getting more computer power for its investment, since costs are reduced when we purchase components in large volumes," Regimbal said. The system's larger size also allows scientists to complete significantly more complex calculations, which help them dig deeper into their research areas, he added.

The initial purchase and installation of Olympus cost $4.4 million. About $3.9 million of that came from internal lab funding for general computing capabilities, while $500,000 came from individual PNNL research projects that invested in specific capabilities needed for their work.

Energy-efficient cooling

Unlike other large-scale computers, Olympus doesn't use air conditioning to remain cool. Instead, it uses water. The novel system uses a closed loop of water that absorbs the heat generated by Olympus as it crunches data.

The system is expected to use about 70 percent less energy than traditional computer cooling with air conditioning, which could save PNNL as much as $61,000 a year on Olympus' cooling costs.

Discovery through computation

Olympus is the heart of the new PNNL Institutional Computing program, which aims to advance scientific discovery through computational science. The cluster became fully operational in mid-October 2011 and it's already working on many PNNL research projects. Olympus is helping analyze how power grids of the future could operate and design better batteries for energy storage.

The system will also be used to improve computer models developed at PNNL, such as the NW Chem computational chemistry suite and STOMP, which simulates the movement of water and contaminants below ground. And PNNL is encouraging its scientists who may not normally use computation as part of their research to consider incorporating it in their next project with the help of the new system.

"High performance computing and simulation will be essential to future scientific discoveries. Olympus allows PNNL to be a player in that future," said Steven Ashby, PNNL's deputy director of science & technology. "It also will help us to nurture a culture of computational science that will enable our scientists and engineers to solve some of the most pressing problems facing the nation."

Olympus Fast Facts:

Theoretical peak processing speed of 162 Teraflops, meaning Olympus can complete computations as fast as about 20,000 typical personal computers combined.
80 Gigabytes per second of disk bandwidth, meaning it can read and write information to a disk about 800 times faster than a typical personal computer.
38.7 Terabytes of total memory, equaling the memory of about 10,000 typical personal computers combined.
4 Petabytes of total disk space provided by Advanced HPC. The system's disk space is the same as about 4,000 typical personal computers or 80,000 standard DVDs combined.
604 computer nodes provided by Atipa, including 1,200 dual AMD Interlagos 16-core processors
About 3.75 miles of interconnect cable provided by Atipa, including a 648-port QLogic core switch
Motivair Chilled Door rear-door rack cooling system
A graphic processing unit (GPU) testbed of 32 nodes, with each node consisting of a dual AMD Interlagos 16-core processor running at 2.1 Ghz, 64 Gigabytes of memory, 1 Terabyte of local disk space, a Quad Data Rate InfiniBand network and one NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPU.

About PNNL

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory where interdisciplinary teams advance science and technology and deliver solutions to America's most intractable problems in energy, the environment and national security. PNNL employs 4,800 staff, has an annual budget of nearly $1.1 billion, and has been managed by Ohio-based Battelle since the lab's inception in 1965. Follow PNNL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

-----

Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Share Options

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPC in the Cloud

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in join the Discussion

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

May 16, 2012

May 15, 2012

May 14, 2012

May 11, 2012

AWS, SAP Announce Certification of AWS Infrastructure for SAP Business All-in-One Solutions

May 10, 2012

May 09, 2012

May 08, 2012

May 07, 2012

Feature Articles

Cloud Services Satisfy a Higher Calling

Higher education involves many collaborative projects that lend themselves to cloud services, however often those services are not tailored to the uniqueness of an academic environment. That's where the Internet2 NET+ project comes in. By partnering with 16 major cloud providers, the networking consortium is seeking to expedite the delivery of cloud services and by doing so advance research and innovation in the United States.
Read more...

Univa CEO Gary Tyreman on the Evolution of HPC, Big Data and Cloud

It's been a little over a year since Univa took over stewardship of the open source workload manager and acquired the founding Sun Grid Engine team from Oracle, and the company just announced its third production release. CEO Gary Tyreman discusses the latest enhancements as well as the company's plans around cloud, big data and the enterprise.
Read more...

Read more HPC in the Cloud features...

Around the Web

Breaking the Cloud Barrier

May 15, 2012 | New Microsoft report shows that beyond the expected financial benefits, cloud services may offer more comprehensive security features compared to in-house IT operations.
Read more...

Vendors Demo Next-Gen Sequencing Platforms for Pharma

May 14, 2012 | During the second annual Pistoia Alliance conference, three teams demonstrated their newly-implemented cloud-based next-generation sequencing platforms.
Read more...

Zunicore Offers Bare Metal by the Hour

May 10, 2012 | PEER1's cloud division, Zunicore, will soon be offering GPU-equipped servers on-demand.
Read more...

US Cloud Providers Struggle With Data Privacy Laws

May 08, 2012 | The Patriot Act leads foreign governments to question the security of US cloud services.
Read more...

Genomic Data Gets Comfy in the Cloud

May 07, 2012 | Startup DNANexus is helping to bring personalized medicine to the masses with its cloud-based next-gen sequencing platform.
Read more...

Read more headlines...

Appro White Paper: Enabling Performance-per-Watt Gains in HPC

04/05/2012 | Appro | Designed to meet the growing global demand for HPC solutions, Appro's Xtreme-X™ Supercomputer delivers superior performance-per-watt and reduced I/O latency while bringing significant flexibility to HPC workload configurations including capacity, hybrid, data intensive and capability computing.

Exploring the Potential of Heterogeneous Computing

04/02/2012 | AMD | Developers today are just beginning to explore the potential of heterogeneous computing, but the potential for this new paradigm is huge. This brief article reviews how the technology might impact a range of application development areas, including client experiences and cloud-based data management. As platforms like OpenCL continue to evolve, the benefits of heterogeneous computing will become even more accessible. Use this quick article to jump-start your own thinking on heterogeneous computing.