Dell super-computer arrives at ACQAO
Posted: Monday, 28 February 2005
DELL DELIVERS QUANTUM LEAP IN SUPER-COMPUTING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND FOR UNDER $250,000
Ground-breaking quantum physics research powered by Dell 72xCPU supercomputer Dell Australia today announced the deployment of a 72 processor supercomputer at the University of Queensland's ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics (ACQAO) research facility to power its ground-breaking research into "ultra-cold atoms". The 36 dual-processor Dell PowerEdge Server Cluster, running on the new Intel Xeon EMT 64 processors, has been deployed with the Linux operating system and cost less than $250,000 to roll-out.
The ACQAO is a collaboration of scientists from the Australian National University, the University of Queensland, and Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology. It has deployed the clustered computing resource in its Queensland University facility to drive highly complex quantum physics calculations relating to Bose-Einstein condensates and ultra cold quantum gases. Bose-Einstein condensates are a state of matter predicted by Einstein in the 1920s, but not observed until 1995 - a feat that was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001. The condensates form when atomic gases are cooled to freezing temperatures a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, and must be described using the equations of quantum mechanics. The research is ground-breaking and promises the development of next generation technology for small, highly accurate devices for precision measurement and nano-technology. It is being conducted in consultation with Nobel Laureate Professor Bill Phillips from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US, and other prominent researchers from around the world. The highly complex nature of the research requires the highest performance computing power. "What we are doing is quite simply the hardest calculations in physics," said Professor Peter Drummond, the UQ node Director of ACQAO. "We need phenomenally high-end computing power but we didn't have a high-end IT budget! Dell's low-cost computing solution meant it was the only vendor able to deliver the sort of performance we wanted at a price we could afford." The cluster configuration is well-adapted to the computations for which it will be used. The calculations can easily be divided among the processors, and running all 36 servers will lead to a huge speed up that will rapidly advance the research. In addition, because they are standards-based Intel servers, the PowerEdge servers are easily scaled-up to larger configurations. This is equally important given the unpredictable nature of the project and the strong possibility that additional computing resources will be needed in the future. "The world is moving away from proprietary systems that take fortunes to buy and years to deploy. We are very excited to be working together with Dell and the University of Queensland to bring standards-based super-computing performance to Australian researchers," said Philip Cronin, general manager Intel Australia and New Zealand. "Intel's continuing success in the RISC, mainframe and HPC market segments now sees more than 60 percent of the Top500 list of Supercomputers around the world based on Intel architecture - a 15-fold increase in the past three years - with Intel architecture now powering more then the combined RISC architectures of Power, SPARC, Alpha and MIPs," he said. Media:
For further information, contact: Professor Peter Drummond, phone +61-7-33653404, email drummond@physics.uq.edu.au; Dr Matthew Davis, phone +61-7-33469824, email mdavis@physics.uq.edu.au, School of Physical Sciences, The University of Queensland; or Mr Paul McKeon, phone +61-2-89725061, email Paul_McKeon@dell.com. http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/BEC/
http://acqao.org/ Dowload flyer (.pdf) |
physics.uq.edu.au)