John Fowler Talks About TACC
Last Friday, I was honored to be a part of the dedication ceremony for "Ranger", the world's largest general-purpose supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas in Austin.
Ranger is funded by the U.S. Government's National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of a multi-track effort to improve the computing capability available to scientists. Developed by Sun in conjunction with TACC, it is the most powerful computing cluster used for open science research in the world - capable of an astonishing 504 trillion floating point operations per second.
Ranger is based on the Sun Constellation System - the world's first open cluster computing environment - and it features ultra-dense compute nodes, ultra-dense InfiniBand switching, high performance storage, and a comprehensive software stack. Clusters like this one use a very broad range of software, including custom-written research codes. Sun software in use at TACC includes Sun Grid Engine, xVM OpsCenter, Sun Studio, Sun StorageTek SAM-FS, and Lustre File System.
This is a beautiful, clean, balanced and powerful system. And as if that weren't enough, we packed this enormous computing power and storage into a 6,000 square foot data center - a space much smaller than most data centers today. Already, TACC is overwhelmed by visitors from around the world who want to see such a unique system firsthand.
This project is an enormous accomplishment for the all those who dared to dream it, develop it, deliver it, and get it working. There were huge challenges along the way, but if it hadn't been nearly impossible, someone else might have done it before us.
Open for business, and with more than 500 projects already underway, Ranger makes possible an enormous increase in scientific capability and paves the way for groundbreaking results for years to come.
Stay tuned: We will have regular Ranger updates in the coming months, including news about the science it enables.
John Fowler
EVP, Systems Group
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Ranger: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/ranger/
Sun HPC Watercooler Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/hpc/
Sun Constellation home page: http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/sunconstellationsystem/index.jsp
NSF Teragrid Project: https://portal.teragrid.org/gridsphere/gridsphere?cid=32&JavaScript=enabled
TACC: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/
Ranger is funded by the U.S. Government's National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of a multi-track effort to improve the computing capability available to scientists. Developed by Sun in conjunction with TACC, it is the most powerful computing cluster used for open science research in the world - capable of an astonishing 504 trillion floating point operations per second.
Ranger is based on the Sun Constellation System - the world's first open cluster computing environment - and it features ultra-dense compute nodes, ultra-dense InfiniBand switching, high performance storage, and a comprehensive software stack. Clusters like this one use a very broad range of software, including custom-written research codes. Sun software in use at TACC includes Sun Grid Engine, xVM OpsCenter, Sun Studio, Sun StorageTek SAM-FS, and Lustre File System.
This is a beautiful, clean, balanced and powerful system. And as if that weren't enough, we packed this enormous computing power and storage into a 6,000 square foot data center - a space much smaller than most data centers today. Already, TACC is overwhelmed by visitors from around the world who want to see such a unique system firsthand.
This project is an enormous accomplishment for the all those who dared to dream it, develop it, deliver it, and get it working. There were huge challenges along the way, but if it hadn't been nearly impossible, someone else might have done it before us.
Open for business, and with more than 500 projects already underway, Ranger makes possible an enormous increase in scientific capability and paves the way for groundbreaking results for years to come.
Stay tuned: We will have regular Ranger updates in the coming months, including news about the science it enables.
John Fowler
EVP, Systems Group
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Ranger: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/ranger/
Sun HPC Watercooler Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/hpc/
Sun Constellation home page: http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/sunconstellationsystem/index.jsp
NSF Teragrid Project: https://portal.teragrid.org/gridsphere/gridsphere?cid=32&JavaScript=enabled
TACC: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/
