HECToR
HECToR is operated by the HECToR partners, University of Edinburgh HPCx Ltd, the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), the University of Edinburgh, and Cray Inc.
The service, which will run to March 2014, provides the following:
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Hardware
The Phase 1 HECToR system includes an array of 60 Cray XT4 cabinets delivering 59 teraflops at peak. In the third quarter of 2008, a Cray BlackWidow vector supercomputer of over 2 teraflops peak will be added. The systems will be connected by a common infrastructure (Rainier) which will also support 576 TB of directly attached storage, rising to 934 TB at the end of the phase.
Phase 2b of HECToR is a Cray XE6 system in 20 cabinets, with a total of 44,544 cores, capable of a peak performance of 360 TF. During 2011, a post processor was added for sole use of the NERC communities.
Phase 3 was launched in February 2012. It is comprised of a Cray XE6 system in 30 cabinets with 2,816 compute nodes and a total of 90,112 cores. The theoretical peak performance is 800 TFlops. A Tertiary Storage System was available for use from April 2012. -
Software
HECToR runs the UNICOS/lc operating system, which comprises two components. On the service nodes, which include the user login nodes, there is a full-featured Linux distribution. The compute nodes run a reduced version, Compute Node Linux, which is designed to minimise the demands on the compute time and memory.