WASHINGTON, June 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers at IBM
(NYSE: IBM) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
today announced that they are broadening their nearly 20-year
collaboration in high performance computing (HPC) by joining forces
to work with industrial partners to help boost their
competitiveness in the global economy.
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Under a recently concluded agreement, IBM and LLNL have formed
an HPC collaboration called Deep Computing Solutions to take place
within LLNL's High Performance Computing Innovation Center (HPCIC).
Announced last June, the HPCIC was created to help American
industry harness the power of supercomputing to better compete in
the global marketplace (http://hpcic.llnl.gov). Deep Computing
Solutions will bring a new dimension to the HPCIC, adding IBM's
computational science expertise to LLNL's own, for the benefit of
Deep Computing Solution's clients.
"The capabilities of California's Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory are uniquely suited to boost American industry's
competitiveness in the global marketplace. The new collaboration
between the Lab and IBM is an excellent example of using the
technical expertise of both the government and the private-sector
to spur innovation and investment in the U.S. economy," said Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.). "The
strength of supercomputing facilities like Livermore's High
Performance Computing Innovation Center offers a broad range of
solutions to energy, environmental and national security problems.
I look forward to following the progress of this new collaboration
in accelerating the development of products and services to
maintain the nation's competitive advantage."
Feinstein delivers remarks on the collaboration today at a
Capitol Hill briefing on "Big Data: The New Natural Resource." The
focus of the briefing is how Congress and the Administration can
harvest the great new resource of Big Data to address the nation's
pressing societal challenges. Follow the discussion on twitter with
#IBMpolicy and tweets from the event @IBMpolicy.
LLNL's HPCIC aims to become the nation's premier provider of
advanced computing solutions to understand and manage complex
systems that underlie 21st century technology. Working within
the HPCIC, Deep Computing Solutions will deploy the complementary
strengths of IBM and LLNL to develop and implement industrial
strength solutions that can help address its clients'
enterprise-critical problems.
Computer and domain science experts from IBM Research and LLNL
will work together with a broad range of American industry
collaborators to devise HPC solutions that can help accelerate the
development of new technologies, products and services. Areas of
interest include, but are not limited to: applied energy; green
energy, including renewable(s); biology; materials science;
fabrication; manufacturing; data management; and
informatics.
The HPCIC effort helps to address the broader issue of economic
competitiveness. "Maintaining a technological edge over the
competition in the global marketplace is vital to both national
security and the country's economic prosperity. Deep Computing
Solutions will be an important ingredient of the HPC Innovation
Center, building on IBM and LLNL's mutual experience in applying
HPC to complex technical problems. Together we will help equip U.S.
industry with the tools for technological innovation needed to stay
ahead of the global competition," said Frederick Streitz, director of the HPCIC.
"Deep Computing Solutions will deploy a comprehensive range of
experienced researchers and developers from both IBM and LLNL to
help develop robust solutions for its clients that can address
enterprise-critical challenges, such as processing very large data
sets to fuel competitive insights," said James Sexton, program director, Computational
Science Center, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY. "The
potential is to aggressively increase the rate and pace of
innovation for our clients and to deliver significant economic
impact as a result."
High performance computing has the potential to provide
groundbreaking impact in research and industrial applications.
However, it has remained inaccessible to the broad community
because its deployment requires access to special expertise and
systems. LLNL's HPCIC and Deep Computing Solutions will directly
address the accessibility problem that currently limits development
and deployment of advanced computing solutions by commercial
organizations.
LLNL has procured a five-petaflop (quadrillion floating point
operations per second) system to support HPCIC and Deep Computing
Solutions efforts as well as unclassified National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) research programs, academic alliances and
LLNL institutional science and technology efforts. Called Vulcan,
the new 24-rack IBM Blue Gene/Q system based on the POWER
architecture will be delivered in Summer 2012. Vulcan is part of
the contract that brought Sequoia, the 20-petaflop Blue Gene/Q
machine recently ranked no. 1 on the TOP500 list of the world's
fastest supercomputers, to Livermore.
The NNSA/LLNL/IBM collaboration has produced six HPC systems
that have been ranked among the world's most powerful computers
including: The Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)
Blue Pacific; ASCI White; the Advanced Simulation and Computing
(ASC) Purple; Blue Gene/L; Blue Gene/P, Dawn; and Blue Gene/Q,
Sequoia. ASCI White, Blue Gene/L and now Sequoia all attained a no.
1 ranking on the TOP500 list. The Blue Gene line of supercomputers
received a Presidential Medal of Technology and Innovation from
President Obama in 2009.
IBM and LLNL have a strong record of award-winning science and
technology innovation. Research teams from LLNL and IBM running
breakthrough calculations on Blue Gene systems have garnered a
total of five Gordon Bell Prizes, the prestigious award for
innovations that advance HPC and the science it makes possible.
The HPCIC resides in Livermore's open campus collaboration area.
See the HPCIC Website for more information:
http://hpcinnovationcenter.llnl.gov/
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(www.llnl.gov) provides solutions to our nation's most important
national security challenges through innovative science,
engineering and technology. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
is managed by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC for the
U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration.
For more about Lawrence
Livermore: https://www.llnl.gov/. For more about LLNL high
performance computing: https://asc.llnl.gov/. For more about LLNL
HPC systems: https://computing.llnl.gov/.
For more information on IBM go to http://www.ibm.com. For more
information on IBM Research go to http://www.research.ibm.com and
follow us on @IBMResearch. For more on IBM high performance
computing go to www.ibm.com/technicalcomputing and follow us on
twitter @ibmhpc.
Contacts:
Joanna Brewer
External Relations, IBM
jmbrewer@us.ibm.com
415-545-2270
Christine Vu
External Relations, IBM Research
vuch@us.ibm.com
914-945-2755
Don Johnston
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
johnston19@llnl.gov
925-423-4902
SOURCE IBM