World’s 11th-fastest Supercomputer to Be Put into Operation at KISTI

The world’s 11th-fastest supercomputer with a computation speed of 25.7 petaflops is about to be put into operation at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). The performance of the fifth version of the Nurion supercomputer is 13 million times and 80 times those of the first and fourth versions, respectively. One petaflop means 1,000 trillion computations per second.

On Nov. 7, KISTI held a ceremony commemorating the initial operation of the fifth version and the 30th anniversary of the Nurion supercomputer. The fifth version will be put into operation on Dec. 3.
 

KISTI purchased the supercomputer for 58.7 billion won (US$52.5 million) from Cray, an American supercomputer manufacturer. A total of 90 billion won (US$81 million) has been invested in the fifth version for software purchase and system configuration.

The new version’s computation speed amounts to 25.7 petaflops, which means it is capable of handling, within one hour, computation that requires seven billion people and 420 years. Its data storage capacity is 33.8 petabytes, meaning it is capable of storing 6.75 million HD films. In addition, it has a total of 570,020 cores and the total length of its system connection cables amounts to 132 kilometers. 12.37 million liters of water circulates through the entire system to cool it.

KISTI’s Nurion supercomputer was completely established in September this year. Its applications include profound research related to the origin of space and so on as well as market analysis, new product development, and handling of national and social issues such as natural disasters and traffic-related problems. In addition, it is going to provide customized software and computing environments in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.