BA Supercomputer

Being a focal point for knowledge and science, the BA seeks to offer a broader scope for research and to provide a wide array of services for scientists and researchers. In an attempt to achieve this goal the BA and the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology combined their efforts for availing a High Performance Computing cluster (HPC), also known as the Supercomputer, aiming at reinforcing the scientific research development.

What is Supercomputer?
The supercomputer is a High Performance Computing cluster with peak performance reaching 11.8 TFLOPS. It is composed of 130 computational nodes, 6 management nodes including two batch nodes for job submission (64Gbyte RAM), Inter-process Communication network (Infiniband with a throughput of 10 Gbps), a 36-TByte storage and a Veritas backup system. Nodes were selected to give a maximum throughput with the highest availability. This is achieved through the two Intel Quad core Xeon 2.83 GHz processors (64 bit technology), 8 Gbyte RAM, 80 Gbyte hard disk, a dual port infiniband(10Gbps), and a GigaEthernet network port.

Supercomputer’s Application Domains
With such specifications, the Supercomputer cluster is to be deployed for specialized applications that require immense mathematical calculations. Due to the significant speed of its processors and its storage size that reaches up to 36 Tbytes, it is considered a valuable tool for researchers seeking optimum and accurate results at a rate of trillions of calculations per second. There are many domains and applications in which the use of the Supercomputer cluster can make quite a difference; as in bioinformatics, data mining, computer vision, image processing, physics simulation, weather forecast, finite elements, oil and ground water exploration, astrophysics and cloud computing, etc.

Who may use the Supercomputer?
The supercomputer targets researchers and scientists from everywhere who might be interested in carrying out their educational research and scientific development at ease and in less time. One of the supercomputer's fundamental goals is supporting the scientific research in Egypt and the region for the advancement of the information society.

LinkSCEEM Project

Maximizing the use of the Supercomputer, the BA has recently joined the EU-funded initiative LinkSCEEM (Linking Scientific Computing in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean), whereof the BA has joined hands with 11 participants representing 7 European and Middle Eastern countries. The project targets building scientific and technological bridges between Europe and the Middle East and to advance computation-based scientific research, such as climate change, bioinformatics, data mining, cloud computing, etc. This partnership is considered as one of the BA efforts to offer a broader scope for research and to provide a wide array of services for scientists and researchers. Through LinkSCEEM, the BA avails its Supercomputer as well as its visualization facility (VISTA) as an efficient platform for advancing science and technology in the region.

Through LinkSCEEM, ISIS is setting out a plan to reach out to Egyptian universities and research centers locally and globally to maximize the use of the high performance computing cluster and to participate in increasing the overall research output in the region.