The prize for using a supercomputer to come up with the fastest solutions to huge problems goes to Indiana University, with help from several other institutions. Honors were handed out late last week in Reno, Nev., at SC07, an international meeting on high-performance computing and networking.
The idea wasn’t to produce the fastest supercomputer, but to jam the biggest program, and the most data, through a system in the shortest time. The Indiana-led team hit a peak transfer rate of 18.21 gigabits per second, nearly twice the rate of the nearest competitor. The feat involved zipping much of the data through high-speed cables to team partners at the Dresden University of Technology, in Germany; the Rochester Institute of Technology; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee; and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
This was not an abstract test. The team had to tackle several daunting real-world problems, including real-time acquisition of X-ray crystallography data, modeling an amyloid peptide (thought to be the molecular culprit behind Alzheimer’s disease), and digitally scanning and preserving ancient Sanskrit manuscripts.—Josh Fischman
