Communications of the ACM
San Diego Supercomputer Center Welcomes 'gordon' Supercomputer as a Research Powerhouse
SDSCs Gordon Supercomputer
Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications
The San Diego Supercomputer Center's (SDSC's) new Gordon supercomputer is designed to help researchers solve the most challenging data-intensive problems, including mapping genomes for personalized medicine and calculating thousands of scenarios affecting aspects of every day life.
"Gordon is an extremely important resource because it is dedicated to solving critical science and societal problems currently overwhelmed by the vast amount of data generated by the digital devices of our era," says University of California, San Diego chancellor Marye Anne Fox.
Gordon is the first supercomputer to rely on flash-based memory to help speed solutions that are held back by slower spinning disk memory.
"We need computational advances such as Gordon, and I am glad to see the confluence of genomics and computational science," says Scripps Research Institute professor Nicholas Schork.
Gordon will be ranked as one of the 50 fastest supercomputers in the world. In recent validation tests, Gordon achieved 36 million input/output operations per second, making it the most powerful supercomputer ever commissioned by the U.S. National Science Foundation for performing such tasks.
"I view Gordon as a new kind of vessel, a ship that will take us on new voyages to makes new discoveries in new areas of science," says SDSC director Michael Norman.
From UCSD News (CA)
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