HPCwire: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Students Build Cluster with Christmann Hardware

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

Tabor Communications
Corporate Video

Leading HPC
Solution Providers

July 05, 2012

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Students Build Cluster with Christmann Hardware

July 5 -- As the only European team, students from Karlsruhe qualified for the Student Cluster Competition, using a self-configured supercomputer by the German company Christmann. Now they won first place for pure CPU-clusters in the finals at the annual International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg. Overall, the team made two first places and one second place.

At the ISC, the most important supercomputing exhibition worldwide, the „kluster“-Team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) won first place for the Linpack benchmark in the category of pure CPU clusters (without graphics card accelerator). With 2.37 Teraflops, the KIT-team achieved the best result at the Linpack benchmark for pure CPU-clusters, with a huge lead over the following cluster. The new Romley CPUs by Intel played a substantial part in this result, in connection with the low Voltage Green DDR3 DRAM modules and Solid State Drives supplied by Samsung.

First place was also awarded for the category ”best team presentation“, and second place at the Linpack benchmark for general clusters. They also nearly beat the Chinese graphics-card-supported cluster, which barely finished before the best pure CPU-cluster. Overall, the team (consisting of students of mathematics informatics and physics) stood up very well against the international competition: There were two teams each from China and the USA. Due to their participation in several previous competitions, their opponents were regarded as very experienced, whereas the kluster-Team competed for the first time.

To succeed at the Student Cluster Challenge, specifically configured computers have to solve different computing tasks, handle custom programs (for example the computation of molecular dynamics or ocean currents), while not exceeding an energy consumption limit of three Kilowatts. Measurement systems (for example the Linpack benchmark) are evaluating the running time of applications in different computer systems.

The company christmann informationstechnik + medien GmbH & Co. KG from Ilsede (Lower Saxony) is the main sponsor of the kluster-team. Known for the development of efficient, high-performance IT infrastructure solutions, the company supported the team through hardware, know-how and working space. In the week prior to the competition, the crew stayed at the „boot camp“ at Christmann’s headquarters in Ilsede, constructing their supercomputer and testing the software. Pascal Kraft of the kluster-team: „It was really great. Here we had everything that we needed for the competition.”

Among the further sponsors of the team, supplying additional hardware for the competition computer, were Samsung, Enermax, Intel, Lehmann, Mellanox, Fraunhofer ITWM and Supermicro.

The Student Cluster Competition will be held again at the ISC 2013. The team from the KIT is considering taking part again and expects a good chance of winning the overall competition next time.

-----

Source: Christmann

Share Options

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in join the Discussion

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

July 12, 2012

July 11, 2012

July 10, 2012

July 09, 2012

July 06, 2012

July 05, 2012

July 04, 2012

July 03, 2012

July 02, 2012

Feature Articles

DOE Primes Pump for Exascale Supercomputers

Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and Whamcloud have been awarded tens of millions of dollars by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to kick-start research and development required to build exascale supercomputers. The work will be performed under the FastForward program, a joint effort run by the DOE Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that will focus on developing future hardware and software technologies capable of supporting such machines.
Read more...

Hybrid Memory Cube Angles for Exascale

Computer memory is currently undergoing something of an identity crisis. For the past 8 years, multicore microprocessors have been creating a performance discontinuity, the so-called memory wall. It's now fairly clear that this widening gap between compute and memory performance will not be solved with conventional DRAM products. But there is one technology under development that aims to close that gap, and its first use case will likely be in the ethereal realm of supercomputing.
Read more...

Green500 Turns Blue

The latest Green500 rankings were announced last week, revealing that top performance and power efficiency can indeed go hand in hand. According to the latest list, the greenest machines, in fact the top 20 systems, were all IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputers. Blue Gene/Q, of course, is the platform that captured the number one spot on the latest TOP500 list, and is represented by four of the ten fastest supercomputers in the world.
Read more...

Read more HPCwire features...

Around the Web

New Mexico to Pull Plug on Encanto, Former Top 5 Supercomputer

Jul 12, 2012 | State says supercomputing center can’t pay bills to keep machine running.
Read more...

Computer Program Learns Games by Watching People

Jul 11, 2012 | Computer scientist builds intelligent machine with single-core laptop and some slick algorithms.
Read more...

Helix Nebula Cloud Contributes to Higgs Particle Discovery

Jul 10, 2012 | Science cloud crunched data that helped build the case for the historic announcement.
Read more...

Plug In and Power Down

Jul 09, 2012 | EU project offers software that makes datacenters more energy-efficient.
Read more...

Keeping Moore’s Law Alive

Jul 05, 2012 | Processor speed and power consumption are now at odds, which will force chipmakers to rethink their designs..
Read more...

Read more headlines...

Tackling the Data Deluge: File Systems and Storage Technologies

06/25/2012 | NetApp | A single hour of data collection can result in 7+ million files from just one camera. Collection opportunities are limited and must be successful every time. As defense and intelligence agencies seek to use the data collected to make mission-critical battlefield decisions, there’s greater emphasis on smart data and imagery collection, capture, storage and analysis to drive real-time intelligence. The data gathered must accurately and systematically be analyzed, integrated and disseminated to those who need it – troops on the ground. This reality leads to an inevitable challenge – warfighters swimming in sensors, drowning in data. With the millions, if not billions, of sensors providing all-seeing reports of the combat environment, managing the overload demands a file system and storage infrastructure that scales and performs while protecting the data collected. Part II of our whitepaper series highlights NetApp’s scalable, modular, and flexible storage solution to handle the demanding requirements of sophisticated ISR environments.

View the White Paper Library

Michael Wolfe Webinar: PGI Accelerator with OpenACC

Join Michael for a look at the first PGI Accelerator Fortran and C compilers to include comprehensive support for OpenACC, the new open standard for programming accelerators using compiler directives.