JUQUEEN: Expansion to 5 Petaflops

After the decommissioning of JUGENE and extensive infrastructural alteration work, especially regarding the supply of demineralized water, the next step was taken in the planned configuration of JUQUEEN : In September, 16 additional Blue Gene/Q racks were delivered as part of the GCS funded partition, positioned at their final destination in the machine hall and installed. After all tests of this new partition had been successfully completed, production of the 8-rack JUQUEEN was switched to these new 16 racks in one maintenance day in mid-October. The following week, the current 8 racks will also be moved to their final destination and reinstalled. At the end of October, the two partitions will be integrated into one hardware system containing 24 racks, which will probably require two more maintenance days. This combined system will reach a peak performance of 5,033 petaflops. For the exact maintenance dates, please see the system status message of JUQUEEN.

Starting in early November, two thirds of the system will be available for national (GCS/NIC) and European (PRACE) users, while one third is reserved for researchers working at Forschungszentrum Jülich or in the HPC branch of the Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance (JARA).

The last step of the JUQUEEN configuration is planned for early 2013. Four more Blue Gene/Q racks (GCS/NIC) and new storage hardware and software for $WORK with improved space, performance and functionality will be installed.
(Contact: Klaus Wolkersdorfer)

from JSC News No. 208, 30 October 2012