U.S. Department of Defense to Use HP Supercomputer

HostReview.com
Monday, July 18, 2005; 02:21 PM

HP (www.hp.com) today announced that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) will be using an HP supercomputer for advanced weapons systems design research.

The powerful HP Cluster Platform 4000 system will be installed in September at the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC) based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The 10-teraflop system will enable the DoD to accelerate its research and collaboration on advanced weapons concepts, improve and speed up modification programs, enhance simulation programs and enable more efficient tests and evaluations.

The HP supercomputer is a 1,024-node Cluster Platform 4000 based on HP ProLiant DL145 servers with AMD Opteron™ processors running the Linux operating system. A high-speed Voltaire InfiniBand interconnect is used with HP's XC System Software providing cluster management capability.

"HP's Unified Cluster Portfolio will enable us to capitalize on the tremendous advances in price/performance provided by industry-standard technologies, while providing a fully supported, robust production system for our critical workload," said Steve Wourms, director, ASC MSRC.

In addition to the HP Cluster Platform 4000 production system, a smaller eight-node development system is also being deployed at ASC and an additional 46-node development cluster will be installed at Arnold Engineering Development Center, Arnold Air Force base near Tullahoma, Tenn.

"HP's Unified Cluster Portfolio will enable the Department of Defense to gain unprecedented levels of insight into its future demands," said Tom Johnson, director, Worldwide Defense Solutions, HP.

The HP supercomputer was chosen by the DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office, as part of its Technology Insertion for 2005 (TI-05) program, based on HP's extensive experience in high-performance computing, the completeness and robustness of the solution and its price/performance ratio.

"This deployment further illustrates the market's acceptance of cluster technologies for supercomputing challenges in real world deployments," said Winston Prather, vice president and general manager, High Performance Computing Division, HP.

The HP systems at Wright-Patterson are supported by 100 terabytes of HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share (SFS) system storage. The 12-node clustered SFS system delivers high-bandwidth, high-capacity storage providing fast and easy access to shared storage.