TOP500: GAUSS Supercomputers are the Fastest in Germany

Thanks to decisive expansion, 1st place in Europe will be achieved in autumn

[27. Juni 2007]

Jülich / Dresden, 27 June - In the TOP500 list published today, which contains the fastest computers in the world, the German Gauss Centre for Supercomputingis up there with the best. The HLRB-II supercomputer in the LeibnizComputer Centre is the fastest computer in Germany and number 10 in the world. Research Centre Jülich holds 2nd place in Germany with its JUBL supercomputer and 18th place worldwide. Research Centre Jülich has set itself the goal of installing a supercomputer with 220 teraflops by autumn, which will see it become the number 1 in Europe and achieve a place amongst the top three in the world. The delivery contract was signed last Monday. Together, the partners of theGauss Centre for Supercomputing want to build one of the planned European supercomputing centres in Germany by 2009.

The HLRB-II supercomputer has a computing power of 62 teraflops, in other words, it processes 62 trillion arithmetic operations per second. Taken as a whole, Research Centre Jülich boasts two of the 24 German supercomputers that feature amongst the fastest 500 computers in the world. JUBL (Jülich Blue Gene/L) has a computing power of around 46 teraflops, while JUMP (Jülich Multi Processor) boasts around 9 teraflops. They are available to around 200 research groups in Europe and perform simulations and compute models from all research areas: from materials science and particle physics to medicine and environmental research. The third Gauss partner, HLRS, has a supercomputer with 12 teraflops and is listed as 108th in the world.

The contract for the computer due to arrive this autumn was signed by Achim Bachem, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Research Centre Jülich, and Martin Jetter, CEO of IBM Germany, last Monday in Jülich. With a computing power of over 220 teraflops (220 trillion arithmetic operations per second), the computer would sit in 2nd place in the current TOP500 list, just behind its similarly constructed brother in Livermore, USA. In Jülich in autumn, 65,000 processors will be in operation connected through an extremely efficient communication network of the latest generation. Blue Gene supercomputers stand out as a result of their compactness and energy efficiency. They use less than a tenth of the power required by similar computers. When IBM delivers the supercomputer, the Research Centre will become one of the first places worldwide to have a Blue Gene/P system.

The powerful computer will be housed in 16 compact presses, each around the size of a telephone booth, in the computer room in Research Centre Jülich, where its predecessors JUMP and JUBL will continue to be kept. This will mean there will be a suitable computer available for every scientific task. Researchers in Jülich will receive support through a sophisticated three-tier system of contact people and experts. Only when it is eventually put into operation will its administrators give the new computer a name as they did its predecessors JUBL and JUMP.

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Press Contact:

Kosta Schinarakis
Science journalist, Corporate Communications
Research Centre Jülich
52425 Jülich, Germany
Tel. 49 2461 61-4771, Fax 49 2461 61-4666
Email: k.schinarakis@fz-juelich.de

Last Modified: 22.05.2022