Published on 02-Sep-2008
"The majority of our users are very enthusiastic about JUGENE because they received a performance boost that was a factor of five over what they had." - Norbert Attig, Jülich Research Centre
Customer:
Jülich Research Centre
Industry:
Computer Services
Deployment country:
Germany
Solution:
Deep Computing
IBM Business Partner:
Force 10 Networks
Overview
Located near Jülich, Germany, the Jülich Research Centre has hosted thousands of scientists and researchers working on a variety of energy, health, environmental, and information technology programs.
Business need:
The center’s researchers often rely on supercomputing to aid them with their research and modeling, and Jülich is committed to providing them the latest in high-performance supercomputing technology.
Solution:
In October of 2007, Jülich installed a 65,000-processor IBM Blue Gene®/P™ system called JUGENE. A Force10 Networks switch was installed to handle the system’s 206 Ethernet connections. When it went online, it was the fastest supercomputer in Europe, and the second fastest in the world. A year later, it still claimed a spot in the world’s top 10, ranking 6th in the TOP500 in June 2008.
Benefits:
JUGENE has enabled breakthrough scientific research for the Jülich Research Centre. It delivers a peak performance of 223 teraflops while offering extremely low power consumption.
Case Study
Nestled in the western Stetternich Forest near Jülich, Germany, sits the Jülich Research Centre. Over the past 50 years, this center has hosted thousands of scientists and researchers working on a variety of energy, health, environmental, and information technology programs. Today, over 4,400 scientists, students, fellows, and technical staff members, as well as 800 visiting scientists from over 50 countries, work at the center. Many of them rely on supercomputing to aid them with their research and modeling.
This ongoing demand for high-performance supercomputing has led to upgrades in storage, networking, and computational power. In October of 2007, the center installed a 65,000-processor IBM Blue Gene/P system called JUGENE. When it went online, JUGENE was the fastest supercomputer in Europe, and the second fastest in the world. Six months later, it still claimed a spot in the world’s top 10, ranking 6th in the TOP500 in June 2008.
Boosting performance
"The majority of our users are very enthusiastic about JUGENE because they received a performance boost that was a factor of five over what they had," reports Norbert Attig, head of the Application Support division. "They are now receiving many more cycles from this system than they did with our previous Blue Gene system."
That previous system, an IBM Blue Gene®/L™, was an 8-rack supercomputer with 16,000 processors. Replacing it with JUGENE is just the latest in a long series of projects Jülich has worked on with IBM, dating back to the 1960s. "The reliability of the system was an issue for us and was one of the reasons we chose IBM technology," explains Attig. "IBM is building highly reliable systems."
JUGENE is attached to a high-performance storage system based on IBM System Storage™ DS4000™ and IBM DCS9550 technology, using a large Force10 Networks switch to handle more than 200 10-GB Ethernet connections. With this configuration, a gross capacity of 1 PB is made available at an aggregated bandwidth of over 16 GB/sec.
A green machine
Meeting the demands of over 200 groups of scientists and researchers isn’t just about raw speed and power, explains Klaus Wolkersdorfer, head of the High Performance Computing Systems division at Jülich. "With JUGENE, we see user applications achieving up to 37 percent of the peak performance of 223 teraflops," Wolkersdorfer notes. "But the big advantage of the IBM Blue Gene/P is its very small footprint. It offers very low power consumption and an extremely good price/performance ratio."
JUGENE fits 4,096 IBM PowerPC® 450 processors onto each of its 16 racks. Each processor in the system displaces less heat than a current state-of-the-art PC processor, which means less power is required to displace heat from the racks.
This energy efficiency is important to Jülich, and not just for the associated cost savings. "Among the many simulations that we run are climate models," Attig says. "It’s good to run those models on a machine that isn’t wasting energy." As a result of its energy efficiency, JUGENE now claims the #33 spot on on the 2008 Green500 list.
Leading the way in supercomputing
What has it meant to Jülich to have Europe’s fastest supercomputer? "It means we are one of the major partners in European supercomputing projects now," answers Attig, "It gives us a leading role to have this system installed here."
For more information
Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at:
ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/bluegene
For more information about Jülich Research Centre, visit:
www.fz-juelich.de or www.fz-juelich.de/portal/home
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware:
Storage: DS4000
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2008 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, New York 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America August 2008 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com , Blue Gene, Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/P, DS4000, PowerPC and System Storage are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml . Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. IBM and Force10 are separate companies and each is responsible for its own products. Neither IBM nor Force10 makes any warranties, express or implied, concerning the other’s products. References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM product, program or service is not intended to imply that only IBM’s product, program or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program or service may be used instead. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Performance data for IBM and non-IBM products and services contained in this document was derived under specific operating and environmental conditions. The actual results obtained by any party implementing such products or services will depend on a large number of factors specific to such party’s operating environment and may vary significantly. IBM makes no representation that these results can be expected or obtained in any implementation of any such products or services. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.