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| Image courtesy of SGI |
An SGI computer which has been nicknamed the ‘Octopus’ and which is currently the largest civil server cluster in Israel has been installed at the Technion computer labs.
The computer will mainly serve researchers at the Minerva Center for Cognitive Processes and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) but researchers from a variety of fields that demand high performance computing will also have access.
The Technion purchased the computer with all available management tools including administrative, applicative and compilers. The SGI InfiniBand Cluster supercomputer is equipped with over 1260 cores has 96 gigabytes of memory for every node with the nodes connected through an infiniBand communication protocol developed by Israel’s Mellanox Technologies and has a storage system with a minimum of 60 terabytes.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the ‘Octopus’ at the Technion computer labs, Technion Deputy Senior Vice President Professor Daniel Rittel said: “The Octopus places us on equal footing with the world’s leading academic institutions.” Dr. Joan Adler a researcher at the Faculty of Physics noted that researchers are already reporting that the code is running 11 times faster on the Octopus than previous systems.