IBM has introduced a new supercomputer powered by one of the world's fastest microprocessors and cooled by an innovative water system.
The new Power 575 supercomputer, equipped with IBM's latest POWER6 microprocessor, uses water-chilled copper plates located above each microprocessor to remove heat from the electronics.
Requiring 80 percent fewer air conditioning units, the water-cooled Power 575 can reduce typical energy consumption used to cool the data center by 40 percent. IBM scientists estimate that water can be up to 4,000-times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.
With 448 processor cores per rack, the new Power 575 offers more than five times the performance of its predecessor, and thanks to advanced water cooling and POWER6 efficiencies, is three times more energy efficient per rack. Nicknamed "Hydro-Cluster" the system supports very large clusters-hundreds of nodes--and enables extreme performance in dense packaging. A single rack features 14 2U nodes, each with 32, 4.7-Ghz cores of POWER6, a stunning 3.5 TB of memory, and yet is more energy efficient than traditional air-cooled designs. At 600 GFlops per node, the Power 575 is three times more energy-efficient in GFlops per kilowatt than the POWER5 generation of air-cooled processors.
Increasing Performance at Max Planck Institute
"We were looking for an energy-efficient supercomputer design, but nevertheless with a high single-processor performance. The new IBM Power 575 with water cooling enables us to scale up our performance, while staying within the given energy envelope in our environment," said Dr. Hermann Lederer, head of Application Support at Garching Computing Center (RZG), Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany. "The new computer will enable Max Planck researchers to tackle new challenging scientific problems and solve single compute tasks five to 20 times faster than is possible on the current system, which was Germany's fastest supercomputer in 2002."
"The Power 575, like all POWER-based supercomputers, is designed for the most computationally intensive problems in energy, engineering, aerospace, and weather modeling," said Dave Jursik, vice president of supercomputing sales for IBM. "IBM continually stretches the boundaries of high-end supercomputing and energy efficiency to meet the expanding requirements of science and technological progress."
Weather Agencies Rely on POWER
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is scheduled to upgrade to the POWER6 version of the Power 575 later this year.
"Ever faster computers are vital to our research on hurricane formation and climate change," said Al Kellie from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "We're especially pleased to see that with the new Power 575, IBM has been able to drastically increase performance while remaining very energy efficient."
"IBM POWER systems have proven to be reliable workhorses for us," said Walter Zwieflhofer, Head of Operations at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, England. The Center is an international organization supported by 30 nations. "The computational might of the new Power 575 and its successors will allow us to create more detailed models, resulting in more accurate forecasts and improved early warnings of severe weather events."
The Zero-Emission Data Center
Looking to the future, IBM scientists at the company's Zurich Research Laboratory recently presented a pioneering concept of a "zero-emission" data center at CeBIT 2008. A new kind of water-cooling system embedded on a chip is the basis for this exciting innovation that captures the water at its hottest and pipes it off the chip for reuse in heating a building or for hot water.
The IBM Research team is working on the next steps: getting the water even closer to the chip--not with a copper plate, but actually inside the chip. Then, once captured there, the water can be routed out of the computer and pumped into the heating system for re-use.
The Power 575 supports both AIX--the IBM UNIX operating system--and Linux, and will be generally available in May.
About IBM Supercomputers
IBM maintains the most diverse lineup of high-performance computers in the industry. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/.
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
TRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now! Request Now.
Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
LATEST COMMENTS
MC Press Online