Cambridge U Deploys UK's Fastest Academic-Based Supercomputer

The University of Cambridge in England has deployed the fastest academic-based supercomputer in the United Kingdom as part of the new Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Open Architecture Lab, a multinational organization that is building the world's largest radio telescope.

The university built the new supercomputer, named Wilkes, in partnership with Dell, NVIDIA, and Mellanox. The system consists of 128 Dell T620 servers and 256 NVIDIA K20 GPUs (graphics processing units) connected by 256 Mellanox Connect IB cards. The system has a computational performance of 240 teraFLOPS (floating-point operations per second) and ranked 166th on the November 2013 Top500 list of supercomputers.

The Wilkes system also has a performance of 3,631 megaFLOPS per watt and ranked second in the November 2013 Green500 list that ranks supercomputers by energy efficiency. According to the university, this extreme energy efficiency is the result of the very high performance per watt provided by the NVIDIA K20 GPUs and the energy efficiency of the Dell T620 servers.

The system uses Mellanox's FDR InfiniBand solution as the interconnect. The dual-rail network was built using Mellanox's Connect-IB adapter cards, which provide throughput of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) with a message rate of 137 million messages per second. The system also uses NVIDIA RDMA communication acceleration to significantly increase the systems' parallel efficiency.

The Wilkes supercomputer is partly funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to drive the Square Kilometer Array computing system development in the SKA Open Architecture Lab. According to Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox, the supercomputer will "enable fundamental advances in many areas of astrophysics and cosmology."

The Cambridge High Performance Computing Service (HPCS) is home to another supercomputer, named Darwin, which ranked 234th on the November 2013 Top500 list of supercomputers.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • abstract pattern of shapes, arrows and circuit lines

    Internet2 Announces a New President and CEO to Step Up in October

    Internet2, the member-driven nonprofit offering advanced network technology services and cyberinfrastructure to the research and education community has completed its search, which began this past May, for a new president and CEO to take the helm.

  • shield with an AI microchip emblem hovering above stacks of gold coins

    AI Security Spend Surges While Traditional Security Budgets Shrink

    A new Thales report reveals that while enterprises are pouring resources into AI-specific protections, only 8% are encrypting the majority of their sensitive cloud data — leaving critical assets exposed even as AI-driven threats escalate and traditional security budgets shrink.

  • stack of gold coins disintegrates into digital particles against a dark circuit-board background with glowing AI imagery

    MIT Report: Most Organizations See No Business Return on Gen AI Investments

    A recent report out of the MIT Media Lab found that despite $30-40 billion in enterprise spending on generative AI, 95% of organizations are seeing no business return.

  • young man in a denim jacket scans his phone at a card reader outside a modern glass building

    Colleges Roll Out Mobile Credential Technology

    Allegion US has announced a partnership with Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) and Denison College, in conjunction with Transact + CBORD, to install mobile credential technologies campuswide. Implementing Mobile Student ID into Apple Wallet and Google Wallet will allow students access to campus facilities, amenities, and residence halls using just their phones.