Sun's largest supercomputer goes online at Germany's Jülich Research Centre

The supercomputer JuRoPA2 went online at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) is the largest high-performance computer centre in Germany and Europe. The centre supplies computing capacity for Forschungszentrum Jülich and researchers from a range of fields, including climate research, chemistry and medicine, with the infrastructure they require for complex calculations and simulations.

As coordinator of PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), JSC is at the top level of Europe's HPC landscape. PRACE also receives financial support from the European Union.

The new high-performance computing (HPC) system features 2,208 nodes supported by the Sun Constellation System and Sun Blade X6275 server modules.

The Sun Constellation Systems operate with Intel Xeon processor 5570 series and communicate with each other via six newly developed "Project M9" InfiniBand switches from Sun. The "Project M9" switches supply quad data rate (QDR) and up to 648 ports while slashing the amount of complex cabling required. Like the Sun Constellation System, they are part of Sun's open PetaFLOP architecture, a package of integrated components for HPC applications.

"By choosing the Sun Constellation System, based on open standards and open source software, Forschungszentrum Jülich has decided on an HPC platform with the highest level of openness the market has to offer," said Marc Hamilton, vice president, HPC, Sun Microsystems. "The Intel-based blades used by the system are leading elements of numerous HPC benchmarks and thus ideal for applications requiring ultra-high performance."