Date: 21/11/2009

Intel invest to built 1000 times more powerful of current supercomputer

Intel and Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines have entered into an agreement to create an Exascale (1 trillion instructions per second) Computing Research Center. Part of Intel's European research network - Intel Labs Europe, the center will explore how to build high-performance computing systems with a thousand times the performance of today's supercomputers.

Intel will support the Exascale Computing Research Center with a multi-million Euro investment over a 3-year period. The French Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique), the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) and the French National High-Performance Computing Agency (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) will combine to match Intel's contribution. It will complement and extend Intel's existing high-performance computing research programs, investments and initiatives, including the Intel Academic Community Program and European Space Agency's "Mapping the Globe from Space" project.

"France has taken a leading role in driving high-performance computing research in Europe," said Steve Pawlowski, Intel senior fellow and general manager of Intel Architecture Group's central architecture and planning. "We chose to work with these three organizations because of their world-class software competency in exascale and high- performance computing."

The Exascale Computing Research Center will include integrating multi petaFLOPS systems, developing advanced performance optimization techniques, and collaborating with end users to optimize supercomputer performance in areas such as energy, seismology, computational fluid dynamics and health care.

The Exascale Computing Research Center will combine French research expertise and high-performance computing vision with Intel products, technologies and experience in this area. The lab will employ about a dozen people initially and is expected to eventually grow to about three times that number.

For more details visit www.intel.com