IBM, University of Toronto Build Massive Supercomputer
Posted on: Thursday, 14 August 2008, 13:20 CDT
IBM Corp has joined the University of Toronto with the primary goal of designing the most powerful supercomputer ever seen in Canada.
The massive supercomputer will require its own building to store the machine which will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second.
The entire budget for the project is set at just under C$50 million ($47 million) over five years. That price includes construction and operating costs involved.
Canada’s supercomputer is already expected to be among the top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world, and the largest outside the US.
The computer, which will be able to hold data equivalent to that held by one million regular DVDs, is equivalent to "30,000 to 40,000 home computers linked together," said Chris Pratt, strategic initiatives executive at IBM Canada.
"The kind of interconnect between parts of the system will allow the equivalent of two full-length feature DVD movies to be moved around in the space of a second," he said.
Building the supercomputer will involve the largest implementation of IBM's iDataPlex system, which holds twice as many processors per unit as standard systems and is entirely water-cooled. More than 4,000 servers will be linked together.
"Every aspect of the system has been put together to be the most powerful and yet the most energy-efficient," Pratt said.
Scientists at the University of Toronto said they hope to use the supercomputer to help with projects involving a wide array of areas from aerospace and astrophysics to climate change prediction and medical imaging.
The project is being funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, in partnership with the province of Ontario and the university.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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