university of Wuppertal installs Germany's most powerful parallel computer running under Linux

In October 1999, the Faculty of Theoretical Physics of the University of Wuppertal made the decision to install a parallel supercomputing cluster consisting of 128 Compaq workstations. The system will be the largest in Germany running under Linux. It will be used for basic research in theoretical physics, electronics technology, applied mathematics, and information theory. The ALiCE processors - the acronym is derived from Alpha Linux Cluster Engine - will be interconnected using Myrinet's Gigabit system.

Installation of the Linux system in the multidisciplinary Institute for Applied Information Theory began in November 1999 and was recently completed. This parallel supercomputer consists of 128 Compaq AlphaServer DS10 systems with the next-generation Alpha 21264 processors, the fastest single processors commercially available. These processors run at a clock rate of 667 MHz, each achieving a peak performance of almost 1.4 gigaflops/s (billions of floating point operations per second). The CPUs are connected via a Myrinet network with a peak transfer rate of 1.28 gigabits/s between two processors. Initial testing with the Alpha processors has achieved a transfer rate of over 1.1 gigabits/s. The total system, which will reach a peak performance of over 170 gigaflops/s, is further configured with a distributed memory of 1.6 gigabytes and 1 terabyte of disk capacity.

the power of "off-the-shelf-commodity" systems

Wuppertal's Alpha Linux Cluster Engine consists of standard workstations and network components, which in principle can be bought anywhere. The power of these "off-the- shelf-commodity" systems has grown so dramatically since the introduction of the Alpha 21264 processor that clusters of this type have become much more cost-effective than proprietary High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. The cluster offers a hitherto unknown flexibility, due to its modularity. Individual system components can be inexpensively upgraded at any time to take advantage of technological advances.

The basis for this new direction in cluster computing is the Linux operating system, the open UNIX system for the PC developed over the last eight years by Linus Torwalds, a Finnish information theory student. Linux has achieved unexpected and increasing popularity. A series of essential software tools running under Linux, which allow easy control of the complete system from just one console, was made available by Compaq especially for ALiCE.

enormous computing capacity was required

This project is being led by the computer-aided elementary particle physics group, under the direction of Professor Klaus Schilling of Wuppertal University's Physics faculty. His group is working in the field of lattice gauge theory, simulating quantum chromodynamics. This fundamental theory describes the strong interactivity between quarks and gluons. Evaluation of the theory using so-called "ab-initio calculation" is necessary, since analytical methods do not work. Experimentation in the future can, in fact, only be interpreted with the help of the results of such theoretical computer calculations.

Since these kinds of simulations require enormous computing capacity, the group must also be responsible for the operation of supercomputers. The Wuppertal researchers exchange data worldwide: scientific cooperation and the networking of European and global computer experimentation with others - such as DESY in Berlin, INFN in Rome, and MIT in Boston - today allow a permanent global transfer of knowledge. Important milestones in supercomputing for Wuppertal were the Connection Machine CM2 in 1990 and the CM5 in 1994 from Thinking Machine Corporation, followed by the ALiCE project.

Such general-purpose clustered computers are a divergence from special systems, which up until now have been very successfully developed in-house by committed researchers, who use them for problem solving in the quantum chromodynamics field. (An example of this is the QCD-SP system, which won this year's Gordon Bell prize for best price/performance ratio.)

Systems such as ALiCE are powerful instruments for all branches of computational science. In this case, the computer is also being intensively used by the faculties for applied mathematics, information theory, and electronics theory. In the electronics field, these projects have great industrial and socio-economic importance, for the contributions they can make in such areas as robotics, computer graphics, and medical data analysis and visualization. Cooperation between the varying disciplines is mutually beneficial, since parallel computing, numerical mathematics, and electronics technology are closely meshed.

A key role is played by the discipline of applied mathematics, represented by Professor Andreas Frommer, director of the interdisciplinary Institute for Applied Information Theory. The newest numeric and parallel methods from Frommer's algorithm wizards find their way directly into the hands of physics researchers, electronics technicians, and chemists.

study of parallel computing is also important

In addition to research, the study of parallel computing itself is important. For a number of years, Wuppertal has offered pioneering practical computer courses on the CM5 supercomputer. For ALiCE, these course offerings will be intensified, with a large number of graduate and post-graduate studies designed specifically with the new machine in mind. Graduates with expertise in complex calculation and simulation are in demand in the industry, particularly in hardware and software development, in the aerospace and automobile industries, and in banking and insurance. Fields of application include the usage and control of computer systems in financial analysis, flight simulators, crash testing, new visualization methods for product development purposes, and the "digital engineering" optimization of huge volumes of data.

Wuppertal's ALiCE will certainly occupy a top position in university research in the field of high performance computing. The system will soon make its entry into the ranks of the leading 100 systems, as categorized in the TOP 500 list of the world's most powerful computers. In the future, however, computers and networking systems won't be measured in today's gigaflops, but in two or three figure teraflops. ALiCE's scalable clustered computers are an important step in the direction of teracomputing.

Spokesperson:

   Professor Dr. Klaus Schilling
   Department of Theoretical Physics
   University of Wuppertal
   Wuppertal, Germany
   University of Wuppertal Web site (in German):
   http://www.uni-wuppertal.de/