Argonne taps IBM Blue Gene for DOE INCITE program

ARGONNE, Ill. (August 17, 2005) – A new collaboration between IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory will provide significant enhancements to computer capabilities available to scientific researchers around the world. IBM and Argonne have agreed to augment Argonne's INCITE computer capacity with compute cycles on IBM's Blue Gene system at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

DOE's INCITE program seeks computationally intensive research projects of large scale that can make high-impact scientific advances through the use of a large allocation of computer time and data storage.

Argonne and IBM are developing a plan for researchers to request computation time on the IBM Blue Gene system nicknamed “BGW.” BGW is the second fastest computer in the world (www.top500.org), with a capacity of 91 teraflops — 91 trillion calculations per second.

"IBM invested in BGW, the fastest privately owned supercomputer in the world, to explore a range of fields including life sciences, hydrodynamics, materials sciences, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics and fluid dynamics — as well as business applications,” said Dave Turek, vice president Deep Computing, IBM. “Due to the overwhelming demand of requests for this platform, we are pleased to be participating in the INCITE program with Argonne and the DOE, and look forward to the results of research conducted on Blue Gene."

Prospective uses of such fast computer capability include large applications in aerospace, automotive engineering, biotechnology, chemistry, energy and physics. Recent accomplishments under the INCITE program have included detailed three-dimensional combustion simulations of flames, providing new insight into reducing pollutants; astrophysics simulations of the forces that help newly born stars and black holes increase in size; and protein simulations designed to advance scientists' knowledge about the function of proteins and their use in drug design.

“The Blue Gene systems offer an exciting path to petascale computing. The DOE INCITE program provides a way for researchers to explore challenging applications on machines that are going to define the future of science,” said Rick Stevens, acting associate laboratory director of Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences at Argonne.

The computer time will be made available to researchers through the Department of Energy's INCITE program – Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment. The program includes high-end computing resources not only at Argonne but also at DOE's Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. At Argonne, 10 percent of the resources on its IBM Blue Gene/L will be available under the INCITE program.

The INCITE program is open to all scientific researchers and research organizations, including industry. The program seeks computationally intensive research projects of large scale that can make high-impact scientific advances through the use of a large allocation of computer time and data storage. Proposals can be for one to three years. A small number of large awards are anticipated. The INCITE program also provides the opportunities for industry to use high-end computing as encouraged in recent reports by the Council on Competitiveness. The Council has identified and reported on industry-specific “grand challenges” that could make a significant contribution to national productivity and competitiveness if more computational capability could be made available to solve them. Examples cited by the Council include full vehicle design, oil and gas recovery, auto crash safety, textile manufacture and customized catalysts to improve crude oil yields. All these could benefit from increased availability of computing power to researchers, according to the Council.

Successful proposals to the INCITE program will describe high-impact scientific research in terms suitable for peer review in the area of research and also appropriate for general scientific review comparing them with proposals in other disciplines. Applicants must also present evidence that they can make effective use of a major fraction of the processors of the high-performance computing systems offered for allocation. Applicant codes must be demonstrably ready to run on the requested computing systems.

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. The University of Chicago manages Argonne for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

For more information, please contact Steve McGregor (630/252-5580 or media@anl.gov) at Argonne.