KTH’s super computer is the most powerful in Sweden

“The Cray computer is the most powerful civilian facility in Sweden at the moment,” says Erwin Laure, manager of PDC at KTH.

The facility provides 93 teraflops at the moment, and when the computer has been fully developed in the autumn, it will provide 305 teraflops. It will make the KTH super computer the best one in Sweden, and one of Europe’s most powerful computers.

KTH’s investment in this computer facility will enable KTH to keep up with the rest of the world in terms of research that requires computational resources, so-called e-science.

“The super computer from Cray will assist researchers and is an irreplaceable tool which will provide results within research areas such as medicine, fluid mechanics, biology and life sciences, and it will also enable the scientists to develop climate models and astrophysics,” says Erwin Laure.

The Cray computer is being financed by KTH together with the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing, SNIC, and is based on AMD’s new processor Opteron which has 12 cores and Cray’s own interconnect technology. The total amount of processor cores amounts to an impressive 11,040 before the upgrade and 36,384 after the upgrade.

The Cray computer will be used by hundreds of researchers and will form part of a European network of super computers. At the same time it will reinforce KTH and PDC’s position in major international projects, for example, as a partner in Advanced Computing in Europe, PRACE, and the European Grid Initiative, EGI. The super computer will also play an important role in major national research projects as a part of the Swedish e-science Research Centre, SeRC.

The official launch of the Cray computer will take place on 31 August, when PDC celebrates its 20 year jubilee.

For more information, contact Erwin Laure at 08 - 790 65 14 or erwinl@pdc.kth.se.

Peter Larsson