Most science research programs that run on high-performance computers like
the IBM Blue Gene/P Intrepid at the Argonne
Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) generate enormous quantities of data that
represent the results of their calculations. But scientists can also use the
ALCF to visualize, explore and communicate their findings as highly accurate
simulations and often beautiful images. Argonne operates the ALCF for the DOE
Office of Science as part of the larger DOE Leadership Computing Facility strategy.
DOE leads the world in providing the most capable civilian supercomputers for
science.
 | | Visualization of an exploding supernova created with the IBM Blue Gene/P at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. |
The ALCF's ability to visualize such enormous quantities of data is made possible
by one of the world's largest graphics processing units (GPU). Nicknamed Eureka,
this installation of NVIDIA Quadro Plex S4 external GPUs allows researchers
to better understand the data they produce with Intrepid at the ALCF. The powerful
installation provides more than 111 teraflops and more than 3.2 terabytes of
RAM.
"Eureka provides a vital link between simulation and analysis by allowing
scientists to probe and interrogate their data in an interactive manner,"
said Argonne computational scientist Paul Fischer. Since Eureka and Intrepid
share a disk, there is no need to move data between machines. " Eureka
dramatically reduces the amount of time needed to create these hugely complex
visualizations, while greatly boosting their quality."
The ALCF's Intrepid provides resources for the U.S. Department of Energy's
(DOE) Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE)
program, which supports computationally intensive projects from industry, scientific
researchers and research organizations.
Using software developed both at Argonne and externally, computer scientists
have visualized data with Eureka for DOE INCITE projects focusing on turbulent
thermal transport in sodium-cooled nuclear reactor cores, cardiac rhythm disorders
and Type Ia supernovae, which are among the brightest and most powerful exploding
stars in the universe.
"Eureka delivers a quantum leap in visual compute density, enabling breakthrough
levels of productivity and capability in visualization and data analysis,"
said Craig Dunwoody, CEO of GraphStream, Inc. in Belmont, Calif., the supplier
of scalable computer systems that provided Eureka.
Eureka incorporates four high-end graphics cards and places them in a configuration
known as a "pizza box." Because the cards are packed so closely together,
this configuration helps to reduce the complicated power and cooling issues
associated with the graphics cards. Eureka needs only four racks to hold the
same number of cards that previous configurations required more than 10 racks
to accommodate.
The heart of Eureka's data-management system contains a nine-switch complex
that supports up to 2,048 connections, each of which simultaneously exchanges
data at roughly 1 billion bytes per second. The storage system consists of a
bank of more than 10,000 disk drives that will send and receive data from the
Blue Gene/P's more than 100,000 processors. Altogether, this system can deliver
nearly 80 billion bytes per second to and from the disk—the equivalent
of transferring the content of 100 full CDs every second.
Posted April 12th, 2009
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