The Brookhaven Computational Science Center (CSC) brings together researchers in biology, chemistry, physics and medicine with applied mathematicians and computer scientists to take advantage of the new opportunities for scientific discovery made possible by modern computers. To achieve research goals in these areas, the center has a close alliance with applied mathematicians and computer scientists at Stony Brook University and Columbia University.
At the CSC, computer clusters running the Linux operating system – typically containing 100 to 200 processors – are currently available for performing scientific calculations for Brookhaven researchers and their collaborators.
Supported by a $26-million grant from New York State, Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University have acquired an IBM Blue Gene/L and Blue Gene/P. Together known as New York Blue, the Blue Gene/L supercomputer has an 18-rack configuration that links together 36,864 processors for a total of 100-teraflops performance, or 100 trillion calculations per second, about 10,000 times as fast as a personal computer. The Blue Gene/P has 2 racks for a total of close to 28-teraflops peak performance and can run threaded codes.
New York Blue is the centerpiece for the New York Center for Computational Sciences, which fosters research collaborations among research institutions, universities and companies throughout New York State. Brookhaven Lab is among the academic and industrial users of the facility that perform research in a wide variety of sciences, including biology, medicine, materials science, nanoscience, renewable energy, finance and technology.
Additionally, Brookhaven Lab has acquired two Blue Gene/Q research supercomputers: (1) a 1-rack IBM Blue Gene/Q for general purpose research that boasts 16 cores per compute node, links together 16384 processors, runs threaded code, has total peak performance of 200 teraflop, and placed fifth on the June 2012 Graph 500 benchmark list; and (2) a 2-rack IBM Blue Gene/Q for use by the BNL Riken Research Center.
Further details about the first three machines and instructions on obtaining an account.