University of Toronto, IBM to Launch Supercomputer

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 machinethat will need its own building for storage and will be capable ofperforming 360 trillion calculations per second.

It’s expected the system will be among the top 20 fastestsupercomputers in the world and the largest outside the United States.It will be able to store data equivalent to that held by one millionregular DVDs.

The entire budget of the project, which includes construction andoperating costs, is just under C$50 million ($47 million) over fiveyears.

Its power is roughly equivalent to "30,000 to 40,000 home computerslinked together," said Chris Pratt, strategic initiatives executive atIBM Canada.

"The kind of interconnect between parts of the system will allow theequivalent of two full-length feature DVD movies to be moved around inthe space of a second," he said.

It will be a big boost to scientists at the University of Torontoand its associated research hospitals, as it will help tackle projectsin an array of areas from aerospace and astrophysics to climate changeprediction and medical imaging.

Among the research, the system will be used to explore the modernscientific mystery of why matter has mass and what constitutes the massof 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 implementationof IBM’s iDataPlex system, which holds twice as many processors perunit as standard systems and is entirely water-cooled. More than 4,000servers 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 willbegin in the autumn and it’s expected the supercomputer will be fullyoperational by next summer.

(Reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski; editing by Peter Galloway)