The ZIV provides services in the field of scientific high performance computing. That way high-capacity hardware can be used for numerically solving complex problems, which standard desktop PCs are insufficient for by far.
On the one hand, high performance computers include high-parallel supercomputers, which combine numerous processors and a very extensive main memory. On such SMP systems (“Symmetric Multiprocessing”) operations can run on several processors simultaneously while accessing a shared main memory. Therefore, this is called “Shared Memory Programming”.
On the other hand, it is possible to achieve an enhancement in processing power using computer clusters. Here various individual computers are connected via a fast communication network (e.g. Myrinet, Infiniband). For simultaneous appliance the main memory is distributed to several systems.
The ZIV offers services and infrastructure in those fields of high performance computing mentioned here:
- ZIVSMP: a high-capacity SMP system with 32 CPU cores
- ZIVHPC: a computer cluster consisting of 20 nodes at 8 CPU cores with a total of 160 Opteron CPU cores; used together with ZIVSMP, so up to 192 CPU cores can be utilised
- PALMA: a cluster of 3560 CPU cores
