The Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology (CTC) at the University of Cambridge has been recognised in the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, with the Readers Choice award for Best Use of High Performance Data Analytics
CTC operates the COSMOS hybrid shared-memory supercomputer which is part of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility and they are also an Intel Parallel Computing Centre (IPCC). The award was for the many-core acceleration of the MODAL analysis pipeline which offered new statistical insights from the Cosmic Microwave Background as observed by the ESA Planck Satellite - Planck is also an STFC-funded project. The work was achieved on the first Intel Xeon Phi-enabled SGI UV2000 with its co-designed ‘MG Blade’ Phi-housing, part of a portfolio of innovative UK systems overseen by the DiRAC Facility.
The Readers Choice award was presented at the 2015 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC15), in Austin, Texas, with the other winners listed on the HPCwire website. The awards are determined through a nomination and voting process with the global HPCwire community, as well as selections from the HPCwire editors.
Professor Paul Shellard, CTC Director said: “We are thrilled at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology and COSMOS IPCC to have received this international award in high performance computing. It is recognition of a unique synergy that we have developed between world-leading researchers from the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility and industry-leading vendors like Intel and SGI which aims to get maximum impact from new many-core technologies for our data analytic pipelines. Dramatic speed-ups have been achieved for our Planck satellite analysis and other codes through a potent combination of new parallel programming paradigms and architectural co-design; these capabilities are opening up new windows on our Universe.”
Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications, publisher of HPCwire, said "HPCwire readers are among the most informed in the HPC community and these awards are ultimately given to the organizations that are making the greatest impact in advancing technology and humanity itself through high performance computing. The HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards send a strong message of support and appreciation from those in the global HPC community. We are proud to be able to recognize these efforts each your and our congratulations go out to all the winners.”
Adapted from an HPCwire press release.