NSF’s Largest Supercomputer in Full Production Mode

The formal “acceptance” of the machine follows a series of rigorous tests designed to gauge its abilities and to ensure it can withstand the coming months of data-intensive simulations. Kraken (named after a mythological sea monster) met a number of criteria for numerous software codes, including HOMME (climate), NAMD (biochemistry), and LSMS (physics), demonstrating its ability to facilitate today’s most challenging high-performance computing (HPC) research projects. All of the codes utilized the full machine, an important metric for the scalability of a system the size of Kraken. “Kraken will be a premier simulation science tool for years to come, greatly enhancing both our knowledge of the world and our ability to translate that knowledge for human benefit,” said Thomas Zacharia, vice-president of science and technology at the University of Tennessee and associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where NICS is housed. A recent upgrade brought Kraken from its original 167 teraflops (trillion calculations per second) to a peak performance of more than 607 teraflops, making it the world’s fastest supercomputer managed by academia. The machine, which features 66,048 computational cores and more than 100 terabytes of memory, officially entered full production mode on February 2. Kraken will remain in full production mode until the next scheduled upgrade in late 2009, granting time to more than 100 research teams on one of the world’s premier supercomputing resources and enabling research in a vast range of areas. Through his work on Kraken, Jeremy Smith, who holds a Governor’s Chair at the University of Tennessee, is studying the natural process of breaking down grasses, husks, and other celluloserich plant sources into sugars for the more efficient conversion of cellulose to biofuels (overcoming the resistance of cellulose to enzymatic hydrolysis is a major obstacle in getting effective, affordable biofuels to market). This research will guide those who are engineering proteins to speed up this natural process of producing energy. For more information, visit the NICS Web site at www.nics.tennessee.edu.