The University of Michigan is collaborating with IBM to develop and deliver “data-centric” supercomputing systems based on OpenPower architecture.
Specifically, under a grant from the National Science Foundation, U-M researchers have designed a computing resource called ConFlux to enable high performance computing clusters to communicate directly and at interactive speeds with data-intensive operations.
ConFlux incorporates IBM Power Systems LC servers and is also powered by the latest additions to the NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform: NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators with the NVLink high-speed interconnect technology. Additional data-centric solutions U-M is using include IBM Elastic Storage Server, IBM Spectrum Scale software (scale-out, parallel access network attached storage), and IBM Platform Computing software.
An initial application for the high-performance system involves a simulation of turbulence around aircraft and rocket engines.
