UAE University rolls out 8 teraflop grid computer

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(from left) Dr Leila Ismail, Director of Sun High Performance Computing Research Laboratory; Dr Rafic Makki, Dean of UAEU College of IT; and Tarek Ayass, Regional Manager, Education and Research Sun Microsystems, Middle East and North Africa

The UAE University has assembled a computing grid capable of processing up to 8.3 teraflops.

The grid, which consists of 100 Sun blades, was developed by the university's College of IT (CIT) and Sun Microsystems, and will be used to provide general computing power for teaching and research.

The grid is a virtualized super computer that can run multiple operating systems and handle tasks for multiple operators simultaneously, and is the largest such deployment in the Middle East.

Access to the grid will be through twenty SunRay thin client devices, in two labs at the CIT, and the university also plans to connect to other grids worldwide.

Dr. Abdullah Al-Khanbashi, vice chancellor of UAE University commented: "The UAE University is pleased to partner with Sun Microsystems to develop a unique grid computing laboratory in service of the university and the greater scientific community. The University is looking forward to working with Sun to develop new grid-enabled applications, from energy to medicine, and contribute in a meaningful way to the global grid development initiatives."

The blade servers used by the grid are twin socket, quad-core machines, which can use either Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processors, to provide flexibility and easy expansion.

The CIT is primarily involved in research around computing applications for the petroleum industry, including seismic and oil-reservoir simulation, along with applications for bioinformatics, multimedia, and e-learning.

Dr Rafic Makki, dean of UAE University, College of IT said: "The mission of the grid computing laboratory at the College of IT at the UAE University is to provide talented students and researchers with an exciting environment to design and implement efficient solutions for computing-intensive applications. The college looks forward to investigate issues that are important to world-wide grid computing such as security and service level agreements."

The grid ranks among the top five hundred most powerful computing systems in the world. The current fastest is IBM’s BlueGene/L at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, which clocks at 478.2 teraflops. Tarek Ayass, education and research regional manager for Sun Microsystems commented: "Sun is delighted to have the UAE University as a new member to Sun's High Performing Computing community. Sun's goal is to provide support for educational and industrial research in the region, and collaborate with international Grid initiatives to lead international research toward the global grid; the next generation of the Internet."

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Fastest Supercomputer in the World: CORRECTION
Posted by Fadi Yousuf, Dubai, UAE on Monday 24 March 2008 at 00:38 UAE time

Just a quick correction on the information mentioned in this article.

The fastest supercomputer in the world is actually not the BlueGene/L mentioned above, but the recent TACC Ranger Supercomputer built by Sun Microsystems and AMD at the University of Texas.

Please look at the following url: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/ta/ta_display.php?ta_id=100379

Regards,

Fadi

Editor's note: While the TACC Ranger running at 504 teraflops does indeed have a faster reported speed than BlueGene/L, it has yet to make the International Supercomputing Conference's Top 500 list, which is usually regarded as the industry benchmark. It will be interesting though, when the list is next updated in June, to see if BlueGene/L can be knocked off the top spot.

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