Academic Supercomputing in Europe

The Netherlands

Statistics

Population: 16.3 million
GDP/capita: €24,900

Policy

NCF - an independent foundation under the umbrella of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) - is in charge of the national policy on academic supercomputing and coordinates and promotes the use of advanced computing facilities.
One of NCF's key policy items is to provide the academic community with access to top-of-the-line supercomputer resources. To achieve this goal NWO has since 1990 fully financed the acquisition and subsequent upgrades and replacements of a national academic supercomputer for scientific research. For the same purpose NCF also co-finances the innovation of the national academic research network to ensure high-speed connectivity of Dutch universities.

Long term funding for the installation, running costs and future upgrades or replacements of the national supercomputer facilities is provided by NWO. The basic funding level is €5.6 million per year, not including additional and ad hoc funding for special facilities.

The larger non-academic research institutes and industry can have access to the national facilities, but this is incidentally used.

NCF spends €0.7 million per year for auxiliary policy as matching funds for the purchase of systems at academic HPC centres.
NCF supports grid development and deployment in the Netherlands through investments in grid infrastructure. A project that started in 2002 is NL-grid, a cooperation of NCF, SARA, NIKHEF, ASTRON and ASCI, that has created a national infrastructure for grid applications. In the period 2004-6 NCF will invest €2.8 million in grid infrastructure.

The national policy on networking for the research community has been established by the SURF foundation - the higher education and research partnership organisation for network services and information and communications technology - whose members are the universities, schools for higher professional education, research institutes and national organisations for research and education. Network innovation is funded by the government on a project/programme basis. The users of the network finance its annual running costs. The budget for 2004 is €30 million.

The GigaPort Next Generation (NG) Network proposal received in November 2003 €40 million funding from the Dutch government. Part of this proposal is the creation of the new national academic network, SURFnet6.

SURF strengthened in September 2002 the collaboration with her UK pendant JISC. They developed an optical network between JISC, SURF and Internet2 creating a London - Amsterdam - Chicago optical testbed.

http://www.nwo.nl/ncf

Supercomputing facilities for the academia

ASTRON (at RUG): IBM BlueGene/L (12288 IBM PC440 FP2/700)
KNMI: Sun Fire 15K/48
NIKHEF: Beowulf cluster (52 Xeon/2800), Beowulf cluster (14 PIII/933 + 128 AMD/2000), Beowulf cluster (100 PIII/800)
NLR: NEC SX-5/8, NEC TX-7/16
SARA: SGI Origin 3800/1024, SGI Altix 3700/416, IBM pSeries 690/192, Beowulf cluster (544 Xeon/3400), Beowulf cluster (72 Xeon/3060)
TUD: Beowulf cluster (64 PIII/1000)
University of Groningen: Cray SV1e/32, Beowulf cluster (400 Opteron/2000), Beowulf cluster (132 P4/1700), Beowulf cluster (64 Xeon/2800)
University of Leiden: Beowulf cluster (64 Xeon/3000), Beowulf cluster (64 Xeon/2670), Beowulf cluster (36 Xeon/1700), Beowulf cluster (64 PIII/1000), Beowulf cluster/79
University of Nijmegen: Beowulf cluster (14 P4/2800)
University of Utrecht: Beowulf cluster (66 Xeon/2800), Beowulf cluster (64 PIII/1000)
UvA: Beowulf cluster (64 PIII/1000)
UvA (at SARA): Beowulf cluster/168
VU: Beowulf cluster (144 PIII/1000)

The SGI Origin 3800+Altix 3700 at SARA is the national supercomputer facility. Many of the other systems in the list above are also accessible through NCF for use by the academic community.

The figure shows for the past 5 years the development of the peak performance of the #1 Dutch system and of the aggregate performance of Dutch HPC systems.

National academic network

SURFnet5 - the national academic network - links the networks of more than 250 organisations. The backbone is 20 Gbps. Most universities and research institutes link at 1 Gbps and some at 10 Gbps.
The worldwide connectivity of SURFnet5 includes a 2.5 Gbps link to GÉANT and 3X1 Gbps links to the USA
End 2005 SURFnet6, a hybrid network (IP and optical) will be operational. Institutes can then connect at 10 Gbps and use dedicated lightpaths.
The NetherLight optical infrastructure is operational since January 2002. The Radio Astronomy institute ASTRON/JIVE has a dedicated DWDM connection (32x2.5 Gbps) into NetherLight. The international connectivity consists of the following lambdas: 2×10 Gbps to StarLight (Chicago, USA), 2×10 Gbps to CERN, 1×10 Gbps to CzechLight in Prague, 1×2.5 Gbps to NorthernLight in Stockholm, 1×10 Gbps to UKlight in London and 2×10 Gbps to New York.

The network is operated by SURFnet BV - a private not-for-profit company owned by SURF. SURFnet's activities are restricted to higher education institutes, research institutions including industrial research, scientific libraries and academic hospitals.

http://www.surfnet.nl

Allocation of resources

Scientists from the academia who want to use any of the national facilities may submit a proposal to NCF. Proposals are discussed in the WGS - NCF's Advisory Committee - and are subject to peer-review. On approval the applicant receives a grant in terms of resource units.

National Grids

The DutchGrid platform aims to co-ordinate the deployment of grids in the Netherlands and to offer a forum for exchange of experiences. Today, 12 research institutions participate in DutchGrid.
DAS-2 is a grid infrastructure consisting of 5 clusters, with a total of 200 processors, distributed over 5 universities (VU, UvA, Leiden, Delft, Utrecht).
NL-Grid is a grid infrastructure currently consisting of a cluster at SARA (72 processors), one at NIKHEF (132 processors) and the DAS-2 cluster.

Acquisition and upgrade plans

TNO (Delft): Cray XD1/36 ordered.

List of abbreviations

ASCI Advanced School for Computing and Imaging
ASTRON Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy
KNMI Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut, De Bilt (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute).
NCF Stichting Nationale Computer Faciliteiten, Den Haag, (NWO National Computer Facilities Foundation)
NIKHEF National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics, Amsterdam
NLR Nationaal Luchtvaart Laboratorium, Marknesse, (National Aerospace Laboratory)
NWO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Den Haag, (The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research)
SARA Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam
SURF Samenwerkende Universitaire Rekenfaciliteiten, Utrecht
TUD Technische Universiteit Delft
UvA Universiteit van Amsterdam
VU Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
WGS Adviescommissie Wetenschappelijk Gebruik Supercomputers (NCF)

Contacts and Addresses

Dr. P.J.C. Aerts
(director of NCF)
NCF
P.O. Box 93575
2509 AN Den Haag
email: aerts@nwo.nl

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