What’s New in the Cambridge High Performance Computer Service? Mike Payne Cavendish Laboratory Director - Dr. Paul Calleja (pjc82) More staff

Darwin Dell PowerEdge cores, GHz Intel Woodcrest processors Infinipath (infiniband) throughout cluster ClusterVision software stack (+ HPC add-ons)

New paradigm for HPC? 20 th in Top500 list – TFlop Linpack Cost less than £2 million – of the order of 1/10 th cost per TFlop compared to similar machines in the Top500 list Explained by commoditisation of high performance computing Doubling of performance in HPC (for same cost) every 9 months (twice Moore’s Law) This will continue for the next 5 years primarily driven by multicore technology HPC will soon be almost free!!

Strategic Alliances UHECSS – University High End Computing Support Service Alliance between Cambridge, University College London, Bristol and Southampton with Daresbury Laboratory and Heriot-Watt University to develop model of shared support services (HEFCE) HPC-SIG – UK HPC Special Interest Group Lobby group for any UK University providing a HPC service – these centres will probably be delivering 300TFlops by the end of 2007 HECToR – 60 TFlops from October 2007

Paying for it The new era of ‘Full Economic Costs’ (FEC) demands that all University facilities are ‘sustainable’ which means that they must recover their costs from users who in turn raise the money needed from research grants...but this will destroy innovation, discourage use, etc etc….

Importance of Innovation in HPC Quantum mechanical atomistic simulations: 2 atoms in 1981, 400 atoms in Increase in computational effort of this calculation using 1981 techniques at least Increase in power of hardware in this period ~100. Hence, innovative software technologies increased efficiency of calculation in this period by at least 10 6.

Paying for it So the Cambridge HPCS will continue to offer free, rapid access to all users - particularly to new users of the system and/or HPC. BUT Large and established users of HPC will be expected to pay for access and will be given priority in the queues to deliver the time they have paid for. As new users expand their use of the service they will be expected to apply for funding to pay for time. 7p per core hour = £9 per TFlop hour (Linpack)