KTH supercomputer is the equivalent of 35,000 iPads

"KTH's supercomputer is the most powerful academic computer in Sweden at the moment, and one of the fastest in Europe. The upgrade will provide researchers with excellent hardware resources, which in turn will facilitate leading-edge research. As a part of the Swedish infrastructure for calculations, SNIC - the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing - is preparing Swedish researchers at KTH for the next level of computing resources, "The Exascale era," said Erwin Laure, head of the supercomputing centre PDC at KTH.

The supercomputer, which is stationed at KTH's PDC, has been named Lindgren and is about 10 times faster than the supercomputer that Linköping University launched at the National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) the other day. Other comparisons can be made in terms of pure performance, one of them is that KTH's supercomputer is the equivalent of 35,000 iPads, or 18,000 dual-core PCs.

"It was especially exciting to see that researchers just a few days after the upgrade managed to run calculations that involved almost all of the 36,000 processor cores. Moreover, it was the biggest job that had ever been run on a Swedish supercomputer," says Erwin Laure.

The supercomputer will play a critical role in major national research projects as part of the Swedish e-Science Research Centre, SERC, and it will be used, among other things, for medical, materials and climate research.

Cray will be delivering the supercomputer, which is being funded by KTH together with SNIC.

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

Peter Larsson