OREANDA-NEWS. August 28, 2009. NPO Saturn has completed the project of a new supercomputer center creation. Launching of the most powerful and high-efficient supercomputer within the Russian and CIS industry with efficiency of 14,3 TFlops (billions of operations per second, with a floating point) is a result of NPO Saturn cooperation with KROK, IBM, Intel, and APC by Schneider Electric companies.


The main objective of the project is a substantial increase of NPO Saturn computational capabilities required for carrying out engineering calculations and enabling to effectively solve not only current but also advanced business tasks of the company.
 
According to Alexander Piontkovsky, NPO Saturn Information Technologies Director, “Nowadays in the sphere of aircraft manufacture no enterprise is able to develop an advanced competitive product without Information Technologies application. Establishing of a new supercomputer center is one of the stages of the company’s complex IT development program. With launching of the most powerful supercomputer within the Russian and CIS industry, the NPO Saturn design department divisions received a powerful tool for creating a competitive product demanded by the market”.
 
NPO Saturn Design Department was the customer of the new supercomputer development. The introduction of the first supercomputer of the company in 2005 enabled NPO Saturn design divisions to pass to a new level of the analytical design based on application of numerical techniques at all stages of gas-turbine engine development.  In 2006, the cluster computational capabilities were actually utilized to about 100%. By this time, NPO Saturn affiliates in Moscow and Perm were also connected to the supercomputer resources. In the middle of 2007, a decision was made to create a new supercomputer that would be 20 times more efficient than the existing supercomputer.
 
”The contemporary gas-turbine engine market requires the developer to significantly reduce time and expenses while creating a new product. To fulfill this task, it is necessary to perform the immense number of engineering calculations in gas-dynamics, strength and acoustics. In this situation modeling of a digital experiment on the supercomputer is difficult to overestimate, as this considerably reduces the number of expensive full-scale engine tests. Today, with application of the cluster techniques we raised to a qualitatively new level of the design work, and with application of this supercomputer we significantly increase our capabilities”, remarked NPO Saturn Technical Director-General Designer Mikhail Kuzmenko.
 
The project started from defining the requirements for a new supercomputer and selecting the optimal version with the help of testing, which was conducted by KROK and NPO Saturn specialists in the IBM Test Center in Montpellier (France).
 
The implemented solution is a high-efficient cluster based on the IBM System Cluster 1350 solution, peak performance of 14,3 TFlops. The blade servers HS21 based on 4-core Intel processors and integrated into a high-speed DDR Infiniband network form the basis of the computational field. The cluster calculation field includes 1344 Intel Xeon and 1344 GB kernels of the core memory. At the moment of putting into operation, this supercomputer was the most powerful supercomputer within the Russian and CIS industry.
 
The cluster is controlled by means of IBM Cluster Systems Management (CSM) software. To provide management of the computational tasks, the cluster software includes the IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler LoadLeveler computer product.
 
The computing system operability is provided by the engineering infrastructure, including the following systems: uninterrupted power supply, precision air-conditioning, automatic gas fire fighting. All the systems are integrated by the central control and automation systems. The APC InfraStruXure complex solution was selected as the basis for building the infrastructure. This is an open, flexible, integrable architecture, easy to scale and to expand along with NPO Saturn requirements growth.
 
”The project of a new supercomputer center creation was a rather complicated technical task. It was necessary to construct a computational cluster maximum adapted to support the whole software complex used by the design divisions for solving engineering problems. Almost a year ago, many qualified specialists, both from the customer NPO Saturn, the prime contractor of the KROK company, and from the supercomputer equipment and subsystems manufacturers were involved in this project development. Thanks to well coordinated teamwork this task was realized in full”, remarked Yuri Zelenkov, NPO Saturn Deputy IT Director, Project Manager.
 
”The project of a new computer infrastructure creation at NPO Saturn became a very interesting task for us. To solve the complex technological problems, we had to involve specialists from different departments of the company. We are happy that we were able to use our competence to advantage, both in the sphere of high-performance cluster platforms development, and in the sphere of engineering and automation and monitoring systems application”, says Ivan Rubtsov, Deputy General Director, KROK.
 
”IBM possesses unique knowledge and experience in the development of innovation cluster products that solve complex tasks of physical processes simulation. We are proud that NPO Saturn has selected the IBM technologies as the ones to meet the customer requirements at most as far as energy efficiency, performance and scalability are concerned. The key advantage of the IBM solution is succession of the technologies applied. As of today, it is for the first time that such supercomputer technologies are used in aviation industry, and this makes this project unique in its sphere of application”, remarked Sergei Bugrin, Director, IBM Hardware, Russia and CIS.
 
”Taking part in the projects of such a rank always becomes a serious check for the engineering infrastructure manufacturers, because to construct the supercomputer systems, the most reliable and high-capacity equipment is selected. The fact that for building the supercomputer engineering infrastructure a bet was placed on the APC solutions testifies that the developments of our company completely satisfy the most stringent requirements for the state-of-the-art engineering systems. We hope that the APC innovation IT-technologies will be a reliable foundation for further achievements of the Russian industry”, pointed out Nikolai Kharitonov, Manager, Certified Partners Activities, APC by Schneider Electric.
 
”The world market leaders feature application of high-performance calculations as an economic tool for increase of the product quality, reduction of time for the design, scientific-engineering studies and the resulting more rapid bringing of quality and competitive product to the market. NPO Saturn, having applied high-performance solutions for several years already, is an example of such an approach in Russia. NPO Saturn has conducted a serious selection of architectures and technologies for construction of the new high-efficient cluster. The specialists of our company took part in this selection as well, and this allowed to implement the most efficient solution, we believe. Selection of the state-of-the-art 4-core Intel Xeon processors will enable to considerably economize on the infrastructure quantity, area and power consumption in regard to the solution, which is significant when the system comprises more than a hundred and fifty servers”, said Dmitry Konash, Intel Regional Director, CIS.
 
In the world practice, systems of such level bear proper names, as a rule. At NPO Saturn, a contest for the best name of the new supercomputer was announced among the employees. Among hundreds of the proposed designations, the AL-100 was found the winner, to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the founder of the company, great scientist and designer Arkhip Lyulka, whose engines are traditionally designated ‘AL’ that stands for Arkhip Lyulka.