SGI to Build Hybrid Supercomputer for Swinburne University of Technology

The Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, has just announced that it has signed a contract with SGI to provide the first phase of the university's new supercomputer that combines traditional CPU-based hardware with GPGPU technology to deliver massive amounts of computing power.

The system, which will be called the GPU Supercomputer for Theoretical Astrophysics Research (gSTAR), will be used as a national HPC facility for astronomers, but will also have time available for other Swinburne researchers.

Phase 1 of the new system focuses on GPU-based nodes, data storage and associated interconnect hardware and is expected to deliver over 1PB, or 1.8 million GB, of rapid-access disk space to Swinburne researchers.

Furthermore, there will be a number of large memory nodes available, each with 512GB of memory, to facilitate processing and visualization of large datasets, all interconnected by a QDR Infiniband network that gives nodes up to 40GB of throughput.

The first phase of the facility is expected to be available in September 2011 and will be housed in Swinburne's new Data Centre. Phase 2, which will focus primarily on CPU-based compute nodes, will be completed by early 2012.

When finished, the supercomputer is expected to deliver a peak performance in excess of 130 TFLOPS.

"We are delighted to be involved in the gSTAR project and confident that this dramatic increase in computational capability will greatly assist scientists at Swinburne to progress their leading research," said Nick Gorga, general manager, Silicon Graphics Australia/NZ.

The gSTAR supercomputer will replace the so-called “Green Machine,” that was installed in 2007 and is comprised of over 1200 processing cores.

The total cost of the new supercomputer will be in the range of $2.5 to 3.0 million when completed, including $1.04 million from a federal government Education Investment Fund grant for gSTAR.