Leading-edge data analytics, visualization set for world's fastest open science supercomputer

ARGONNE, Ill. (July 22, 2008) – The IBM Blue Gene/P Intrepid at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), located at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, will soon have the data analytics and visualization capability to complement its distinction as the fastest computer in the world for open science and the third fastest overall computer in the world.

Argonne awarded GraphStream, Inc., Belmont, Calif., a contract that will help to make data analytics and visualization at this scale possible through the world's largest installation of NVIDIA Quadro Plex S4 external graphics processing units (GPU). This new supercomputer installation, nicknamed Eureka, will allow researchers to explore and visualize the data they produce with Intrepid. The powerful installation will offer 104 dual quad core servers with 208 Quadro FX5600 GPUs in the S4s.

"During a massive computation on Intrepid, torrents of data can be unleashed onto the multi-petabyte parallel file system," ALCF acting director Pete Beckman said. "For example, in just a little over a minute, Intrepid can produce the equivalent of 1,000 DVDs of file data. Eureka will be used to peer ever deeper into scientist's data, from simulations of the electrical signals of the human heart to exploding supernova. Aided by Eureka, scientists will plow through the tidal wave of data produced by Intrepid faster than ever before, searching for new insights."

Most applications that run on large-scale systems like Intrepid generate huge volumes of data that represent the results of the calculations. An essential tool for understanding those results after the run has completed is to be able to explore rapidly the output data and convert it to a visual representation. To do so at the scale required by Intrepid applications requires a system with Eureka's power.

GraphStream, a supplier of scalable computer systems, will use the NVIDIA Quadro Plex (S4) visual computing system as the base graphics building block.

"With the addition of Eureka, the GraphStream/NVIDIA collaboration to provide the world's most advanced scalable visual computing systems now extends to the sites of the three most powerful supercomputers in the world," said Craig Dunwoody, CEO of GraphStream. "Using the NVIDIA Quadro Plex S4 visual computing system as the base graphics building block, Eureka will deliver a quantum leap in visual compute density, enabling breakthrough levels of productivity and capability in visualization and data analysis."