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The following content is from an older version of this website, and may not display correctly. SGI, the California-based maker of high-performance computing equipment, has sold its SGI Altix UV 1000 supercomputer to a team of researchers from a number of UK universities, lead by the infamous physicist Prof. Stephen Hawking.
The UK Computational Cosmology Consortium (Cosmos), based at the University of Cambridge, is deploying the system to support its research of the universe's origins.
"Recent progress towards a complete understanding of the universe has been impressive, but many puzzles remain," Hawking said in a statement. "Cosmology is now a precise science, and we need supercomputers to calculate what our theories of the early universe predict and test them against observations of the present universe."
Cosmos chose Altix UV for the high-performance, scalable, big-memory computing it provides. Altix UV supports up to 16 terabytes of global shared memory in a single system image. The system is based on the latest Intel Xeon 7500 series processors and enables scaling from 32 to 2,048 cores with architectural provisioning for up to 262,144 cores.
SGI is collaborating with Cosmos on code porting to the Altix UV platform, applications knowledge transfers between SGI engineers and Cosmos users, parallel programmer support and end-user training.mSGI will continue support for Cosmos researchers as they undertake strategic projects following the system's installation.
Cosmos director Paul Shellard said the system will help the consortium "advance the confrontation between fundamental and observational cosmology, especially using Planck satellite data."
The UK Computational Cosmology Consortium (Cosmos), based at the University of Cambridge, is deploying the system to support its research of the universe's origins.
"Recent progress towards a complete understanding of the universe has been impressive, but many puzzles remain," Hawking said in a statement. "Cosmology is now a precise science, and we need supercomputers to calculate what our theories of the early universe predict and test them against observations of the present universe."
Cosmos chose Altix UV for the high-performance, scalable, big-memory computing it provides. Altix UV supports up to 16 terabytes of global shared memory in a single system image. The system is based on the latest Intel Xeon 7500 series processors and enables scaling from 32 to 2,048 cores with architectural provisioning for up to 262,144 cores.
SGI is collaborating with Cosmos on code porting to the Altix UV platform, applications knowledge transfers between SGI engineers and Cosmos users, parallel programmer support and end-user training.mSGI will continue support for Cosmos researchers as they undertake strategic projects following the system's installation.
Cosmos director Paul Shellard said the system will help the consortium "advance the confrontation between fundamental and observational cosmology, especially using Planck satellite data."