2010/07/05 > eTech France 243 > Europe's Most Powerful Supercomputer is Powered Up

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		Special Feature Europe's Most Powerful Supercomputer is Powered Up http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/63931.htm Tera 100 is the name of the extraordinary machine that ranks among the world's top three supercomputers with a theoretical computing power of 1.25 Petaflops. The petaflop scale is capable of carrying out one million billion operations per second! Designed and engineered by Bull and CEA (French Atomic Energy Commission), Tera 100 will be used for the CEA simulation program that ensures the reliability of nuclear deterrent weapons. The supercomputer was powered up on May 26, 2010, a few weeks after its installation in March. "The power-up of Tera 100 is a major industrial success. It highlights CEA and Bull's skills and expertise in developing ultra high-performance technologies at the highest world level and fully validates the industrial and research partnership that CEA and Bull have deployed," said CEA Computer Simulation and IT Project Manager Jean Gonnord. "Not only are the technologies critically important for applications such as CEA applications, but also for the design of tomorrow's computing power plants and massive Cloud Computing infrastructures," underscored Bull Products and Systems Division Vice President Philippe Miltin. As intensive computing is strategic for the balance of the economy and society, expertise in the technologies means a major asset for France and Europe. An Amazing Machine on All Counts Tera 100 is amazing on all counts! It consists of 4,300 bullx S series servers, integrates 140,000 Intel Xeon 7500 processing cores, 300TB of central memory and a total storage capacity of more than 20PB. Its 500GB/sec throughput is a world record for this type of system. Several comparisons clearly illustrate its outstanding computing capacity. Tera 100 can carry out more operations in one second that the world's population would be capable of performing in 48 hours if each person completed one operation per second. Its information transfer capacity is the equivalent of a million people watching high-definition films simultaneously and its storage capacity equals more than 25 billion books. After power-up, a test campaign has begun and will last until mid-July 2010. "The purpose is to see if the machine is operational," recapped Jean Gonnord. During the next stage, test codes and measurements will be run. One is the the widely known Linpack test that is the reference for the Top 500 supercomputer classification, which is updated every six months. "Actually, our own computing codes will be our main thermometer to assess the expected performance of our applications that will then be used by the systems engineers." In mid-September, Tera 100 should be declared "operational' from a computing standpoint. The machine will then be open to select users who will be able to test different computing codes until the end of this year. France Soon to Have Two Similar Machines When it is officially declared operational in late December, the machine will be handed over to CEA Military Applications Division and, save exception, will be dedicated to defense work. Exceptionally, earlier machines were involved in the mapping of the human genome (Tera 1) and in prion research (Tera 10). "But these are totally exceptional cases," confirmed Jean Gonnord. Another petaflop-scale machine, identical to Tera 100, is being engineered following a request by the Ministry for Higher Education and Research and should be operational some time in 2011-2012. "Soon France will have two very high power machines under CEA's responsibility, one for defense and the other for research," exclaimed Jean Gonnord.	>> Suivant Version imprimable >> Transmettre cette info par email >> Recommander ce site à un collègue / ami >> S'abonner au eTech France >> FAQ / foire aux questions >> Conditions d'utilisation >>


	Pour en savoir plus, contacts :	CEA - CEA Computer Simulation and IT Project Manager Jean Gonnord Jean Gonnord - email: jean.gonnord@cea.fr	Code brève ADIT : 63931

	Rédacteur :	ADIT - Jean-François Desessard - email: jfd@adit.fr


	Origine :	eTech France numéro 243 (5/07/2010) - ADIT / ADIT - http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/63931.htm

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