The Amsterdam institute SARA has started with the purchase of a new supercomputer. The current supercomputer is in August to four years and is out-of-date. For the successor, an amount of 10 million euro has been reserved.
Of which 10 million euros in the supercomputer three years able to run. “Initially, we wanted to 17 million euro reserve for five years, but we have not yet within”, says deputy director Peter Michielse of SARA. The acquisition of the new supercomputer, is still in an early stage; providers are now asked to make an offer. That should be according to European rules, because SARA with public money is funded.
However, Michielse broadly an idea of how the new supercomputer should look. “The peak performance should be about a factor of ten higher than the current,” says Michielse. The current supercomputer Huygens approximately 65 teraflops. Michielse cautions that it is not so much the peak performance, but to the average performance in use.
What ram will the new supercomputer ‘slightly’ more economical’ to be done. “We already have a relatively lots of memory”, says Michielse. The Huygens has about 15TB of memory. The 700 terabytes of storage is likely to be increased to 5 up to 10 petabytes. The current system also has a data throughput of 160Gbps between different nodes in the supercomputer; there are “a few tens of gigabytes’ at.
Finally, the total cost of ownership is important, says Michielse. “Also, the energy consumption is a significant cost,” he says. The Huygens was supplied by IBM, but because it is a public tender, every manufacturer join the bidding. Michielse expect that in september or October, a candidate is selected, then the machine at the beginning of next year can be delivered.
Last year it was announced that the government money in the direction of SARA would be down for an upgrade of the Huygens; now seems to be that so no upgrade, but a new supercomputer.