Green ICE discovered in the desert!
While it doesn't do much for the sweltering southwestern summer heat outside, The University of Arizona's high performance computer system is not only highly ranked internationally, but very cool. And green.
Among supercomputing facilities worldwide -- including corporations, private research centers and universities -- the SGI Altix ICE system operated by The University of Arizona's Research Computing is the 237th most powerful computer in the world and the 50th greenest in the world in electrical usage. The June 2008 rankings are by Top500 and Green500.
Research Computing currently provides processing power to 97 research groups in 29 different departments at the University. In April 2007, Research Computing's previous supercomputers were replaced with an SGI Altix 4700 computer. On April 1 of this year, the SGI Altix ICE was added to provide additional resources and reduce waiting times for users. Together the two computers provide 31 times the power in half the space of the previous machines.
The two SGI Altix computers use the university's chilled water system to cool the air coming off the processors, meaning that the machines provide cold air to the entire computer room while they run. When they came on line, a 20-ton air conditioner was retired.
The SGI Altix ICE is an expandable system currently running 1,392 processors. Research Computing operates two-thirds of the processors on behalf of all its clients. To date, eight campus groups have bought additional processors for the system, which gives them priority use on those processors for their projects. By buying into the centralized supercomputer, the research groups save on space, administration and operations, and personnel costs, gain specialized consulting from Research Computing, have access to additional processing capacity for larger projects and when their projects aren't running, their processors can be put to use on other campus research needs. If new processors need to be added, the additional computing power can be online in 24 to 48 hours a few days after the new processors arrive.
Some of the projects Research Computing supports are worldwide climate modeling for Geosciences and modeling space shuttle re-entry at Mach 8 for Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Researchers who have bought-in on the SGI Altix ICE range in specialization from BIO5, to Steward Observatory, Arizona Research Labs and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Researchers looking to expand their computing power are encouraged to talk to Research Computing to discover the benefits of using or adding on to the University's centralized supercomputer.
For more info
The University of Arizona Research Computing
High Performance Computing consult Listserv
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