Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention Chooses SGI Supercomputers
Servers Quadruple Institute's Computing Power for Simulation of Global Ocean Circulation and Earthquake Wave Transfers
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SGI Japan has announced that a 384-CPU SGI® Origin® 3800 server system installed at Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) has begun operation, following installation last May. NIED, an independent administrative agency based in Tsukuba, Japan, conducts earth sciences research and development as applied to disaster tracking and prediction, a field that relies heavily on large-scale simulations.
Since it first began using supercomputers in 1991, NIED has been a pioneer in the use of data simulations to create global ocean circulation models, crust structure analyses and earthquake wave transfers, along with related simulations involving massive calculations.
Until now, the institute has been using custom applications on vector and multiparallel-processor supercomputers. The new SGI® supercomputer will be used to compute more difficult simulation models and to create more precise simulation data output than has been possible until now. The system features the scalable SGI® NUMA architecture, which enables the use of more memory and provides the NIED with more than four times the computing power available to the agency until now.
Several factors led to NIED's decision to convert to SGI technologies. The SGI Origin 3800 server was chosen not only for its large-scale parallel architecture but also for its stability. The Origin 3800 system's successful track record in the Japanese market and the positive reputation of SGI Japan's Management Services' support also factored into the evaluation process.
The new system will be shared by scientists at disaster research facilities across Japan and will serve as a node in the Tsukuba Wide Area Network, a new grid-like infrastructure scheduled to go live later this year. It joins other recent large SGI® Origin® 3000 series server installations in Japan, including the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute and Kyoto University Science Research Center.
For further information about applications of SGI technologies for the sciences, visit www.sgi.com/go/sciences, and for details about weather modeling, visit www.sgi.com/industries/government/weather.html. SGI Japan's Web site is located at www.sgi.co.jp, and details about the SGI Origin 3000 series are available at www.sgi.com/origin/3000/.
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