[HLUG] I just saw the UK's fastest Linux super computer today :-)

[Julian Robbins]

Hello

Gosh what an interesting day :-)

I went to an Open Day today at the Daresbury Laboratories up in Cheshire
http://stfc.ac.uk/Our+Research/4471.aspx where they do lots of exciting
work in particle physics and more. Interestingly, Linux was mentioned a
couple of times during the various open day's demos. They showed us how
they're using raspberry pi's as controller pc's for a simple project,
running Lubuntu  as a lowcost controller system; to their super computers,
one suite which is now the UK's fastest supercomputer (about 1.3 Pflops),
(1.3 to power of 15 operations per second). It's the 13th fastest
worldwide... All IBM stuff watercooled with about 500 separate computer
units clustered to create a super computer. It supplies a lot of computing
power to the northern Universities for simulations, and modelling and more

I also spoke to another chap involved with supporting supercomputers from
OCF from the Daresbury Business park. He said most of what they run is
LInux with various clustering solutions. He said he recently had an enquiry
to support Windows HPC (High power computing ) which he bemoaned
as apparently Microsoft dont support this any more at all which makes it
difficult to make it run well at all ....


All *very* interesting stuff ..

Nice to see Linux used in such esteemed company ..

Julian