SGI Delivers Large Scale Shared Memory System for Earth Simulator

Silicon Graphics International Corp. announced that the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) has selected SGI UV 2000 powered by Xeon processor E5-4600 v2 series for pre and post-processing offline grid simulations for its earth simulator supercomputer.

Working with NEC Corporation, the SGI solution will be installed at the JAMSTEC earth simulator supercomputer center and is targeted for production on March 24th, 2014.

The JAMSTEC earth simulator supercomputer is integrated with the Xeon processor E5-4600 v2. The new Intel processor was built for efficiency and performance for the enterprise market. With the combination of SGI UV 2000 and this new processor, SGI continues to see HPC customers utilizing the scalable open shared memory platform while simultaneously expanding its use cases in the enterprise market.

World Record Benchmark Exceeds Previous SGI Record
SGI UV 2000 with the Xeon E5-4600 v2 processor announced a new SPEC OMP2012 world record of SPECompG_base2012 = 61.9, a 13.6% improvement over the previous SGI record of 54.5. (competitive results are from http://www.spec.org as of March 3, 2014)

SGI Helps JAMSTEC Increase Compute Efficiency.
The solution provides JAMSTEC with fine-grained simulation results and increases compute efficiency. It will accelerate a number of research projects involving earth sciences, especially those related to global warming projections. In addition, the solution will be utilized by automotive manufacturers and both the pharmaceutical and chemical industries through a Strategic Use Acceleration Program of Earth Simulator, a program designed to increase industrial usage through strategic partnerships.

Because earth science research requires computational resources to run high resolution and high precision numerical simulations, the earth simulator supercomputer will be used widely by both JAMSTEC and industry scientists. Over the coming months, JAMSTEC will further enhance the capabilities of the system to provide higher degrees of precision, faster turnaround on research projects, and enhanced visualization of those simulation results.

“SGI UV 2000 powered by Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v2 series propels us to the next level of large scale, fine-grained simulations that were otherwise unthinkable due to memory constraints,” said Dr. Toshiyuki Asano, group leader, simulation technology application research group, earth simulation center, JAMSTEC. “Furthermore, due to the significant and specialized capability of the supercomputer, we expect to see a substantial increase in industrial use through our strategic partnership initiatives. Through the Strategic Program of Earth Simulator for advancement of industrial use, we are already seeing research projects needing the entire memory capacity of UV 2000.“

“Researchers like those at JAMSTEC are leading the way for monumental advances in climate change but truly innovative progress is often hindered by memory limitations,” said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO, SGI. “JAMSTEC’s Earth Simulator is a perfect example of how massive-scale, coherent shared memory systems can accelerate the pace of innovation. SGI is constantly building on our current technologies so we can continue enabling innovative breakthroughs, like those at JAMSTEC, across data-intensive fields.“

JAMSTEC’s SGI UV 2000 solution is one of the largest shared memory systems powered by 2,560 cores of Xeon processor E5-4600 v2 series and provides 49.152 Tflops of computing capacity with 32TB shared memory for a single system instance. Along with UV 2000, SGI UV 20 powered by 40 cores of processor E5-4600 v2 series enables visualization of the simulation results and SGI InfiniteStorage 17000 provides RAID storage solution with 240TB capacity under a NFS environment.

“Innovative and scalable solutions like SGI UV 2000 help scientists, academics, and industries to gain greater insight to their data-driven computing problems through the increased memory capacity provided by the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v2 processor in 4 socket configurations,” said Charles Wuischpard, VP technical computing group, Intel Corp. “The new Intel Xeon E5-4600 v2 processor also helps these systems meet the needs of demanding workloads with up to 50% more performance, while conserving power with 45% greater energy efficiency when compared to previous-generation products.“

SGI UV solutions with support of processor E5-4600 v2 are available.