Expected to be one of the fastest computers in the world, the University of Toronto and IBM Corp are building Canada's most powerful supercomputer. The supercomputer machine will need its own building and will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second.TORONTO (Reuters) - The University of Toronto and IBM Corp (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
are building Canada's most powerful supercomputer, a mammoth machine
that will need its own building for storage and will be capable of
performing 360 trillion calculations per second.
It's expected the system will be among the top 20 fastest
supercomputers in the world and the largest outside the United States.
It will be able to store data equivalent to that held by one million
regular DVDs.
The entire budget of the project, which includes construction and
operating costs, is just under C$50 million ($47 million) over five
years.
Its power is roughly equivalent to "30,000 to 40,000 home computers
linked together," said Chris Pratt, strategic initiatives executive at
IBM Canada.
"The kind of interconnect between parts of the system will allow the
equivalent of two full-length feature DVD movies to be moved around in
the space of a second," he said.
It will be a big boost to scientists at the University of Toronto
and its associated research hospitals, as it will help tackle projects
in an array of areas from aerospace and astrophysics to climate change
prediction and medical imaging.
Among the research, the system will be used to explore the modern
scientific mystery of why matter has mass and what constitutes the mass
of the universe.
Funding is being provided by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation,
in partnership with the province of Ontario and the university.
Building the supercomputer will involve the largest implementation
of IBM's iDataPlex system, which holds twice as many processors per
unit as standard systems and is entirely water-cooled. More than 4,000
servers will be linked together.
"Every aspect of the system has been put together to be the most powerful and yet the most energy-efficient," Pratt said.
A data center will be built just north of Toronto. Installation will
begin in the autumn and it's expected the supercomputer will be fully
operational by next summer.
(Reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski; editing by Peter Galloway)
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