Memory-shared supercomputer lands in Spain

Hewlett-Packard, Intel and the Supercomputing Center of Galicia (CESGA) announced this week that they will collaborate to install Europe's highest-capacity memory-shared HPC supercomputer in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Called Finis Terrae, the high performance computing machine will be dedicated to international collaborative research projects that require large computing and storage capacity, CESGA said in a statement, Tuesday.

The supercomputer, supplied and maintained by HP, will use more than 2,500 Intel Itanium 2 processor cores and a high-performance Infiniband network. It will have a 19,000GB shared memory architecture, disk storage of 390,000GB and a 1-petabyte automated tape library. It will use free software: Linux, Lustre and Globus. The total project will cost 60 million euros ($72.74 million) and be operational by mid 2007, CESGA said. The news follows an announcement earlier in March that the Julich Research Center in Germany had begun operating what's thought to be Europe's most powerful supercomputer.