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The supercomputer, dubbed the "Earth System Modeling
Facility," consists of seven clustered IBM eServer p655
servers that are each equipped with eight Power4+ CPUs, plus
an IBM eServer p690, which includes 32 Power4+ CPUs. It runs
AIX Unix and will cost just over $1 million, according to David
Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. The 528GFLOPS
system is capable of calculating 528 billion floating-point
operations per second (FLOPS).
Also included in the setup is 32TB of RAID5 storage using
two IBM xSeries 335 servers running Red Hat Linux and Sistina
Software Inc.'s Global File System.
The machine will be used by researchers in the UC Irvine Department
of Earth System Science to predict the impact of global warming,
pollution and other stresses on the earth. Among the questions
to be analyzed is how global warming, man-made pollutants,
polar-
ice movements and chemical cycles will affect the Earth and
its inhabitants.
In its present configuration, the machine offers a large processing
punch at a relatively low price for a supercomputer, Turek
said. That means smaller groups that once wouldn't have been
able to afford such high-end equipment will now have access
to more powerful machines.
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Results of the research will be
provided to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other
national climate modeling efforts. The Earth System Modeling
Facility is being paid for with money from the NSF and the
university.
Charles Zender, assistant professor of Earth system science
at the university, said the new system replaces a 4-year-old
Silicon Graphics Inc. machine that was less powerful and
had no attached storage. Researchers had to ship their computing
jobs out to government facilities in San Diego or Boulder,
Colo., for processing, then analyze the data when it was
returned, he said.
"Now we have the full turnkey system," so students
can use it and see how the work is done on-site, Zender said.
IBM was one of three qualified bidders who sought the contract,
he said. Benchmark results were collected from the vendors
for some of the Fortran applications used to do the weather
modeling so the department could select the best equipment
for the work.
"They were very, very serious and complicated benchmarks," Zender
said.
The system has been in operation for the past week and was
successfully brought up to full working capacity today for
the first time, he said.
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