Chalmers University of Technology

Gridcore has had a long collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology. We have been working with several institutions, delivering Linux clusters and workstations.

Picture of the 1008 core system called "ADA"

2007

At the installation date - January 2007, Gridcore delivers what is at its birth time the fastest system in Sweden, utilizing 1008 cores named "ADA".

Intel Woodcrest processors in IBM Bladecenter H and a separate cell with 96 Intel Woodcrest cores and the Qlogic InfiniPath interconnect.

The system was sold together with a twin system called "Milletto" for Lund University operated through Lunarc.

Gridcore has delivered a Linux cluster used for crash simulations at the Department of Machine and Vehicle Systems, Crash Safety Division at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The activities within the Crash Safety Division have the primary goal to prevent traffic injuries. The research projects focus on fundamental biomechanics of injuries leading to principles for protective systems.

Based on different analysis methods and models, the Crash Safety Division produces information that identifies how an injury is produced in the body (injury mechanisms) and the violence levels required to produce the injury (injury thresholds). This knowledge is then applied to developing new and improved safety systems for all types of road users.

Applications that will be used in the cluster among others are Radioss, MADYMO, LS-DYNA and will be run through the DRM system Sun Grid Engine.

2001

Photonics Laboratory, Department of Microelectronics, Chalmers University of Technology.  At the Photonics Laboratory the research is focused on optical technologies, from laser design to high capacity fiber optic communication systems.

To make the research more efficient, a central high performing computer resource was installed during 2001, mainly to be used for optical-related computations as for example optical fiber communication systems, integrated optics and other problems which need either a design study (many runs with different parameters - aka Monte Carlo simulations) or the treatment of large dimension problems (large and complex geometries).

The resource consists of a Linux-based PC cluster running the department's different homegrown codes as well as commercial applications. Gridcore is responsible for the daily operation of the cluster and further development both in software and hardware.

The Gridcore team has implemented a solution that lets the engineers start a simulation at work and later check the status through a web browser. Also, to make sure that the resources are used as efficient as possible, a DRM tool is used.

Quoting Magnus Karlsson, Associate professor:

"The Gridcore staff has showed a deep interest and responsibility for their implementations and has enabled our simulations to run faster and to be more accessible. Their excellent knowledge regarding compute-intensive solutions in general and Linux solutions in particular has therefore enhanced our computation capabilities with 1-3 orders of magnitude."