The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (; CSCS) is the national

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

centre of

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. It was founded in Manno, canton

Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...

, in 1991. In March 2012, the CSCS moved to its new location in

Lugano Lugano ( , , ; ) is a city and municipality within the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. It is the largest city in both Ticino and the Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland. Lugano has a population () of , and an u ...

-Cornaredo. The main function of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre is a so-called National User Lab. It is open to all Swiss

researcher Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

s and their assistants, who can get free access to CSCS'

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

s in a competitive scientific evaluation process. In addition, the centre operates dedicated computing facilities for specific research projects and national mandates, e.g.

weather forecasting Weather forecasting or weather prediction is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather info ...

. It is the national competence centre for

and serves as a technology platform for Swiss research in

computational science Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science, and more specifically the Computer Sciences, which uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and s ...

. CSCS is an autonomous unit of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

) and closely collaborates with the local

University of Lugano A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

(USI).

Building

Outside View of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre

The building at the new location Lugano-Cornaredo has a pillar-free machine hall of 2,000 m and can be powered with up to 20 MW electricity. Water for cooling the supercomputers is taken from

Lake Lugano Lake Lugano ( or , from ; ) is a glacial lake which is situated on the border between southern Switzerland and northern Italy. The lake, named after the city of Lugano, is situated between Lake Como and Lago Maggiore. It was cited for the first t ...

in 45m depth and pumped over a distance of 2.8 km to the centre. Thus, little energy is consumed for providing the cooling and the computer centre achieves a high energy efficiency with a PUE < 1.25.

Supercomputers

Supercomputer procurements at CSCS can be categorised into two phases: In the first phase from 1991 to 2011, the centre focused on proven technologies in order to facilitate user access to its services. This strategy was centred on the SX

vector processor In computing, a vector processor or array processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set where its instructions are designed to operate efficiently and effectively on large one-dimensional arrays of data called ...

architecture of

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

. The IBM SP4, installed 2002, was the first production system of CSCS with a massively-parallel computer architecture. The procurement of the first

Cray XT3 The Cray XT3, also known by codename '' Red Storm'', is a distributed memory massively parallel MIMD supercomputer designed by Cray Inc.. Cray collaborated with and delivered to Sandia National Laboratories in 2004. The XT3 derives much of its ...

in Europe in 2005 marked the beginning of the second phase. Since then, CSCS concentrates on early technologies, preferably before they become a generally available product.

Current computing facilities

Previous computing facilities

National Supercomputing Service

Run as a user lab, CSCS promotes and encourages top-notch research. Simulations created on supercomputers yield completely new insights in science. Consequently, CSCS operates cutting-edge computer systems as an essential service facility for Swiss researchers. These computers aid scientists with diverse issues and requirements - from the pure calculation of complex problems to analysis of complex data. The pool of national high-performance computers is available to its users as a so-called user lab: all researchers in and out of Switzerland can use the supercomputer infrastructure.

Dedicated HPC Services

In addition to the computers of the User Lab, CSCS operates dedicated compute resources for strategic research projects and tasks of national interest. Since 2001, the calculations for the

numerical weather prediction Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to weather forecasting, predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of comput ...

of the Swiss meteorological survey

MeteoSwiss MeteoSwiss, officially the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, is an office of the federal administration of Switzerland. It employs 290 people at locations in Zurich, Zurich Airport, Geneva, Locarno and Payerne. History Originally ...

take place at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. In January 2008, the first operational high-resolution weather forecasting suite in Europe was taken in production on a massively-parallel supercomputer at CSCS. Another dedicated computer resource operated by CSCS is the Swiss tier-2

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The newes ...

for the Computing Grid of the

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

LHC The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, and ...

accelerator. CSCS also provides storage services for massive data sets of the Swiss

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological system ...

initiative /www.systemsx.ch/ SystemsXand the /www.c2sm.ethz.ch Centre for Climate Systems Modelling C2SMat

Research and development

For supporting the further development of its supercomputing services, CSCS regularly evaluates relevant new technologies (

technology scouting Technology scouting is an element of technology management in which :(1) emerging technologies are identified, :(2) technology related information is channeled into an organization, and :(3) supports the acquisition of technologies. It is a sta ...

) and publishes the results as

white paper A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. Since the 199 ...

s on its website. In 2009, CSCS and the

jointly launched the platform /www.hp2c.ch/ HP2Cwith the goal to prepare the application codes of Swiss researchers for upcoming supercomputer architectures. /www.ethrat.ch/sites/default/files/ETHR_FS_HPCN_E_101025.pdf ''Factsheet: Supercomputing - a key to greater competitiveness'' Information of

ETH Board The Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Board, German: ''Rat der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschulen'', French: ''Conseil des écoles polytechniques fédérales'') is the strategic unit elected by the Swiss Federal Coun ...

. Last accessed 13 August 2012.

Notes and references

External links

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Current Computers
{{authority control Supercomputer sites Science and technology in Switzerland ETH Zurich Buildings and structures in Ticino 1991 establishments in Switzerland Institutes associated with CERN