James E. O'Brien

After 18 days and millions of computer hours of processing data over more than 160.000 processors, we now have what  NASA Scientists and other scientists around the world  consider to be the most accurate and detailed simulation of  the evolving universe to date, giving physicists and astronomers a powerful tool for studying the cosmos.

The Bolshoi simulation code is designed to model the distribution of dark matter across a span of one billion light years. Dark matter comprises 22% of the universe. This matter, different from atoms, does not emit or absorb light, and is invisible to conventional observation techniques. It has only been detected indirectly by its gravity. 74% of the universe is composed of “dark energy”, that acts as a sort of an anti-gravity. This energy, distinct from dark matter, is responsible for the present-day acceleration of the universal expansion.

About the Pleidades Supercomputer:

“Pleiades, which ranks 7th on the TOP 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers,  epresents NASA’s state-of-the-art technology for meeting the agency’s supercomputing requirements, enabling NASA scientists and engineers to conduct modeling and simulation for NASA missions. This distributed-memory SGI ICE cluster is connected with InfiniBand in a dual-plane hypercube technology.”

“The system contains the following types of Intel® Xeon® processors: X5670 (Westmere), X5570 (Nehalem), and E5472 (Harpertown). Pleiades is named after the astronomical open star cluster of the same name.”

System Architecture

Manufacturer: SGI

184 racks (11,712 nodes)

Total cores: 111,872

Total memory: 188 TB

Source: http://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/resources/pleiades.html

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