1,054 computing cores deliver 12 TeraFlops of peak performance

Feb 14, 2012 23:01 GMT  ·  By

EURO/CFD, an engineering company specialized in numerical calculation, has just announced that it acquired a new HPC cluster built around AMD’s Opteron 6200 Series “Interlagos” processors, which can deliver 12 TeraFlops of performance at its peak speed.

In order to achieve this feat, the cluster installed by EURO/CFD utilizes no less than 1,054 computing cores which are seconded by a whopping 6TB of RAM system memory.

All the computers forming the cluster are then connected to one another via a fast InfiniBand QDR type network, while data is stored both locally and on a remote system.

“Turning this 1 000 cores corner is a real pride for our small company. Thanks to this investment in our HPC cluster, we ensure our position as major expert in numerical simulation in France,” said Karim Loueslati, the CEO of EURO/CFD.

“EURO/CFD team of expert now carries out powerful and complex calculations without the time pressure. They can concentrate on providing technical advice to our customers and on being more reactive to respect customers’ deadlines.

“The decrease of delays due to computing allows EURO/CFD’s PhD’s and engineers to focus on their core skills: physics analysis. In one word, investing in cutting edge hardware makes human competencies able to express their talent,” concluded the company’s rep.

Since their introduction in the second half of last year, AMD’s Opteron 6200 Series processors based on the Bulldozer architecture have proven to be quite popular among HPC and cloud system vendors.

The main reason for that is the high number of cores available since AMD “Interlagos” processors can include as many as 16 computing cores in the same package .

One of the first machines to include the new server CPUs was the Cray XK6, which paired AMD's Opteron 6200 CPUs with Nvidia's Tesla 2000-series compute boards.