DOE dedicates Argonne Leadership Computing Facility
ARGONNE, Ill. (April 21, 2008) – The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne
National Laboratory today celebrated the dedication of the Argonne
Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) during a ceremony attended by key
federal, state and local officials.
The ALCF is a leadership-class computing facility that enables the research
and development community to make innovative and high-impact science and engineering
breakthroughs. Through the ALCF, researchers conduct computationally intensive
projects on the largest possible scale. Argonne operates the ALCF for the DOE
Office of Science as part of the larger DOE Leadership Computing Facility strategy.
DOE leads the world in providing the most capable civilian supercomputers for
science.
"I am delighted to see this realization of our vision to bring the power
of the department's high performance computing to open scientific research," said
DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach. "This facility will
not only strengthen our scientific capability but also advance the competitiveness
of the region and our nation. The early results span the gamut from astrophysics
to Parkinson's research, and are exciting examples of what's to come."
Orbach, Patricia Dehmer, DOE Office of Science Deputy Director for Science
Programs, and Michael Strayer, DOE Associate Director of Science for Advanced
Scientific Computing Research, attended the ALCF dedication, along with Congresswoman
Judy Biggert.
DOE makes the computing power of the ALCF available to a highly select group
of researchers at publicly and privately held research organizations, universities
and industrial concerns in the United States and overseas. Major ALCF projects
are chosen by DOE through a competitive peer review program known as Innovative
and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE).
Earlier this year, DOE announced that 20 INCITE projects were awarded 111
million hours of computing time at the ALCF. The diverse array of awards includes
projects led by Igor Tsigelny, San
Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego,
to model the molecular basis of Parkinson's disease; William Tang, Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory, to conduct high-resolution global simulations
of plasma microturbulence; and Jeffrey Fox, Gene
Network Sciences, to simulate
potentially dangerous rhythm disorders of the heart that will provide greater
insight into these disorders and ideas for prevention and treatment. Academic
institutions, including the University
of Chicago, the University
of California at Davis and Northwestern
University, and large public companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Pratt & Whitney,
also received computing time at the ALCF through INCITE.
Argonne has been a leading force in high-performance computers. Two years
prior to the establishment of the ALCF in 2006, Argonne and Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory began working closely with IBM to
develop a series of computing systems based on IBM's BlueGene platform.
Argonne and IBM jointly sponsor the international BlueGene
Consortium to share expertise and software for
the IBM BlueGene family of computers.
Since 2005, Argonne has taken delivery of a BlueGene/L and BlueGene/P that
have a combined performance capability of 556 teraflops per second. Key strengths
include a low-power system-on-a-chip architecture that dramatically improves
reliability and power efficiency. The BlueGene systems also feature a scalable
communications fabric that enables science applications to spend more time
computing and less time moving data between CPUs. Together with DOE's other
Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has deployed
a large Cray supercomputer, computational scientists have platforms that provide
capabilities for breakthrough science.
"The ALCF has tremendous computing ability, making it one of the country's
preeminent computing facilities," said Argonne Director Robert Rosner. "The
research results generated by the ALCF will be used to develop technologies
beneficial to the U.S. economy and address issues that range from the environment
and clean and efficient energy to climate change and healthcare."
DOE selected a team composed of Argonne, PNNL and ORNL in 2004 to develop
the DOE Office of Science (SC) Leadership Computing Facilities after a competitive
peer review of four proposals. PNNL operates the Molecular Science Computing
Facility, and LBNL runs the National Energy Research Science Computing Center. DOE SC's computational capabilities are expected to quadruple the current
INCITE award allocations to nearly a billion processor hours in 2009.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology.
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic
and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne
researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities,
and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific
problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for
a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed
by UChicago
Argonne, LLC for
the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office
of Science.
For more information, please contact Angela Hardin (630/252-5501
or ahardin@anl.gov) at Argonne.
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