New Bull supercomputer will help the Institute answer questions about the origins and evolution of the Universe, and the nature of energy and dark matter
The new Bull cluster will enable this center for physical cosmology – led by Professor Licia Verde and Professor Raúl Jiménez – to carry out simulations of the Universe and analyze the cosmology mapping data that it produces.
According to Prof. Raúl Jiménez: “The new simulations of the Universe and the data that we will be able to produce using the new Bull supercomputer will enable us to respond to fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of the Universe, and the nature of the dark matter and energy which is speeding up its expansion.”
Prof. Licia Verde pointed out that: “Our work involves mapping BOSS1 galaxies, analyzing the results provided by the European Space Agency’s EUCLID satellite, and decyphering data from the LSST2 telescope. It is clear that mapping galaxies in the future will not be possible unless we can properly interpret the data that they give us: which is why we need access to maximum computing power to carry out these experiments successfully.”
The bullx solution for Extreme Computing
The intensive computing solution that has been configured for the ICC to meet its needs for computing power and data storage capacity is based on a 28-node bullx cluster architecture (224 compute cores), using 2.26 GHz Intel® Xeon® Nehalem E5520 processors with over 1,320 GB of DDR3 RAM. The solution also features a 12 TB shared storage sub-system, with all the elements connected via an ultra high-speed network based on 40Gb/s QDR InfiniBand technology.
Overall systems administration and management is provided by ‘Bull Cluster Suite’ software, which offers integrated functionality designed specifically for administering clusters, developed and based entirely on Open Source technologies.
