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NCAR SELECTS PLATFORM COMPUTING GRID TECHNOLOGY

The Scientific Computing Division (SCD) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has selected Platform Computing's Platform LSF HPC workload management software for deployment on its new 256-processor IBM e1350 Linux cluster. Platform LSF HPC will enable NCAR to integrate its heterogeneous computing environment under a single workload management system and job scheduler, and to also evaluate, develop and deploy Grid-based computation and data management technologies. This will facilitate development of next generation models of Earth's climate, weather, atmospheric chemistry and related geophysical processes.

NCAR selected Platform LSF HPC after an extensive evaluation of available workload management technologies and NCAR's current and future requirements for adaptable, priority-based job scheduling in a heterogeneous supercomputer environment. Prior to selecting Platform LSF HPC, NCAR had used a variety of computer workload management software. NCAR had also developed application scheduling algorithms specific to the needs of its research communities to maximize supercomputer throughput and utilization.

NCAR's evaluation found that Platform LSF HPC's built-in workload scheduling capabilities were similar to the proprietary technology NCAR had developed to manage its largest supercomputers. Moreover, since Platform LSF HPC runs on systems available from all major computer vendors, NCAR will no longer need to port its scheduling algorithms to vendor-specific systems.

Al Kellie, director of NCAR's Computational Information Systems Laboratory and SCD, stated: "Utilizing Platform LSF HPC product is a strategic move that will permit us to first integrate our own computing resources under a single batch scheduler and to also exploit Platform LSF Grid computing software to integrate NCAR computing resources with those of other centers. This will ultimately facilitate future distributed, large scale, computational campaigns in the atmospheric and related sciences."

"An advanced computing Grid provides the backbone for a resilient weather Grid," said Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing. "In the context of mounting international concern about the economic and environmental impact of global climatic change, Grid computing technology enables NCAR to more accurately model trends and extremes in weather."

NCAR has already deployed Platform LSF HPC on its 64 processor IBM p690 system and its new 256 processor IBM e1350 Linux cluster. NCAR will also deploy the software on a Silicon Graphics Origin system and additional Linux HPC clusters as part of an in-house heterogeneous computing Grid testbed.