Academic Supercomputing in Europe

Norway

Statistics

Population: 4.6 million
GDP/capita: € 30,100

Policy

The policy on supercomputing was since 1995 set by the Research Council of Norway (NFR). A Program for Supercomputing installed vector facilities in Trondheim, clusters in Oslo and MPP technology in Bergen.

NTNU lead the 2000-2004 HPC project NOTUR. NOTUR was funded by NFR (~50%), and the partners in a consortium consisting of all four universities in Norway, Statoil, SINTEF, DNMI and ViewTech ASA. The project realised HPC facilities at NTNU and at the universities of Oslo, Bergen and Tromsų. DNMI uses these computing resources for operational atmospheric and oceanographic forecasting and for research.

End 2004, following recommendations for the structure of Norwegian HPC given by an international committee appointed by NFR, the not-for-profit company UNINETT Sigma was established. This company, placed under the Norwegian NREN UNINETT, is responsible for the development and the operation of HPC in Norway and will continue the collaborative model of NOTUR. The NOTUR II project will cover the period 2005-2014. The four universities and UNINETT are represented in the Board of Directors. NFR takes part as an observer. The HPC activity of UNINETT Sigma will support UNINETT's role as coordinator of the Norwegian grid.

http://sigma.uninett.no/index.en.html

http://www.notur.org

Supercomputing facilities for the academia

NTNU: SGI 3800/512, SGI 3800/384, Beowulf cluster (66 P4/3400), Beowulf cluster (29 AMD/1466 + 22 AMD/1400), Beowulf cluster (22 P4/3400), SGI Altix/32
Oslo University College: Beowulf cluster (15 P4/2800)
University of Bergen: IBM pSeries 690/96, IBM cluster (172 Opteron/2400), IBM cluster (64 PIII/1266)
University of Oslo: HP SuperDome (64 Itanium2/1500), Dell cluster (348 Xeon/3400), Beowulf cluster (86 Xeon/2400), Beowulf cluster (28 Athlon/1600)/44
University of Tromsų: HP cluster (244 Itanium2/1300 + 160 Itanium2/1600), HP SuperDome/32

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

National academic network

UNINETT is the national network for research and education in Norway. The primary customers are the universities, regional high schools and research institutions. Its backbone is 2.5 Gbps.

UNINETT's international connectivity is through a 10 Gbps connection to NORDUnet.

UNINETTS' 2005 budget is € 9.13 million. It is provided by the government (40%) and the users (60%).

http://www.uninett.no

Allocation of resources

The Program Committee for High Performance Computing of the Norwegian Research Council awards computing time on the NOTUR systems after a referee process of the applications.

National Grids

The 1-year (2004) Norgrid project aims to build grid competence and to prepare the Norwegian HPC infrastructure for the introduction of middleware technology. The partners are NTNU, The universities of Bergen, Oslo and Tromsų and UNINETT. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council and by the partners.

Acquisition and upgrade plans

List of abbreviations

DNMI The Norwegian Institute of Meteorology
NFR The Research Council of Norway
NTNU The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
SINTEF Stiftelsen for Industriell og Teknisk Forskning (Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research)

Contacts and Addresses

Professor Petter Bjørstad
Institutt for Informatikk
Universitetet i Bergen
N-5020 Bergen
email: petter.bjorstad@ii.uib.no

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