Garching data center

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The Garching Computing Center ( RZG ) is the joint computing center of the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP).

It was originally built as a data center for the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) founded in 1960 by Werner Heisenberg and the Max Planck Society. It soon served as a joint data center for IPP and the neighboring Max Planck Institute in Garching near Munich . It has offered its services to all Max Planck Institutes throughout Germany since 1992 . The most important services are supercomputing , data management / mass storage, and data acquisition.

Supercomputing

High-performance computing began in 1962 with an IBM 7090 system, followed by an IBM 360/91 in 1969. The installation of a Cray- 1 in October 1979 marked the entry into vector computing technology that determined high-performance computing for almost 20 years. A Cray XMP-24 followed in 1985 and a Cray YMP-4 in 1991.

Research into the possibilities of massive parallel computing (MPP) also began in 1991 with the first German nCUBE2 / 64. The transition from vector to parallel technology then took place in 1995 with the installation of a Cray T3D / 128. This was already replaced by a T3E / 128 in October 1996, which was expanded to 816 processors in February 1998.

After the first deliveries in 2001, parallel computing was continued from 2002 on a Power4 (p690) based system from IBM, which with 3.8 TFLOPS was at number 21 on the Top500 list and thus the fastest computer in Germany. This system has been expanded to a capacity of 5.2 TFLOPS. The individual p690 nodes are connected via an HPS "Federation Switch" as a high-speed communication network. There are also 86 IBM Power5 (p575) systems.

Since the end of 2007, 3 racks of an IBM Blue Gene / P with 32.8 TFLOPS have also been installed. In spring 2008, a Power6- based system with Infiniband as an interconnect was put into operation, which provides 126 TFLOPS of power and was introduced at number 19 on the Top500 list.

The RZG supports users from the Max Planck Institutes in programming and optimizing their applications on the high-performance computers, especially in the fields of fusion research , materials science , theoretical chemistry , polymer research , astrophysics and earth sciences.

In addition, the RZG is involved in various national and international projects. The German eScience project D-Grid and the European project DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications) deserve special mention .

Archive systems

In addition to the large amount of data generated during the simulations on the high-performance computers, the data from the fusion experiments of the IPP, ASDEX Upgrade, Wendelstein 7-AS and the Wendelstein 7-X, which is currently under construction, as well as satellite data from Max Planck are also stored at the RZG -Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) stored and managed on a long-term basis.

As early as the 1970s, archive and editing systems (AMOS and later HADES) were developed at the RZG, which can automatically save the data on tape in the background. In the mid-1990s, UNIX systems were introduced to continue this functionality. This transparent outsourcing of data from online storage media (disk systems) to offline storage media (tape robot systems) is constantly being developed. The archive systems contain data that is twice or even three times older than the archive systems themselves.

Data acquisition

Since 1998 a group at the RZG has been developing and improving the software for the data acquisition of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment and the current ASDEX Upgrade fusion experiment.

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