21st May 2013
CCT’s own Dr. Brett Becker has spearheaded a new supercomputing awareness initiative this month, presenting a research paper at the 12th Information Technology and Telecommunications conference in Athlone, Co. Westmeath. The Irish Supercomputer List, www.IrishSupercomputerList.org, is a league-table of the most powerful computers in Ireland and will be updated bi-annually with the first list being made public in November 2013. The project has now entered a phase of engagement with all stakeholders in the High Performance Computing (HPC) community, including a call for participation from users and maintainers of Irish HPC installations. Essentially the list is for the Irish computing community what the Fortune 500 is for the global business community.
Although Ireland has grown over the last two decades into a high end centre of excellence in the IT sector with most of the major multinational IT companies having a strong presence, we have not until now maintained any record of the level and type of supercomputers which are based on the island of Ireland. Now for the first time a formal list is being completed based on the same standards employed by www.top500.org, which has been tracking the fastest supercomputers globally for 20 years.
The Irish Supercomputer List is maintained by an independent group of computer science researchers representing several Irish institutions including CCT, UCD, and DCU. It also has an international perspective with representatives from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.
Speaking of the launch of the project, Dr. Brett Becker, of CCT said:
“The development of an Irish supercomputer ranking list is a fundamental first step in highlighting the place Ireland occupies in terms of high performance computing globally. It will help Ireland continue in its role of attracting the highest calibre of companies, people and funding in global IT. It will create quite a few ripples in international terms since as a country Ireland is punching far above its weight when compared to other countries with much larger populations.”