“The objective of the capital refresh was to actually have a game-changing computational footprint for Western Australia,” Elahi mentioned.
“So we went from about one petabyte for the Australian analysis communities, as supplied by Pawsey, to, on the finish of the total deployment of Setonix, might be about 50 petabytes.”
The primary stage of the improve already represents a forty five per cent enhance in uncooked computing energy in comparison with the centre’s Magnus and Galaxy supercomputers.
To place it in perspective, an everyday pc has 4 to eight cores to finish separate duties with. Setonix section one has nearly 65,000 cores, and when the supercomputer is full it’ll boast greater than 200,000 cores throughout 1608 nodes.
Stage two will even incorporate 768 high-end graphics processing models – or GPUs, acquainted to followers of pc gaming – to spice up the supercomputer’s capabilities.
As Elahi put it; it will take an everyday laptop computer roughly 1 / 4 of a yr to finish the equal of a minute’s work for Setonix.
Among the ASKAP radio telescope’s 36 dishes on the normal lands of the Wajarri Yamatji, on the website of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.Credit score:Alex Cherney/CSIRO
Radio astronomy goes to be one of many massive benefactors of the Pawsey centre improve – by its very nature it takes an enormous quantity of computing and reminiscence – however a variety of scientific disciplines from molecular dynamics to particle physics even have use for Setonix.
After which there’s analysis on the pc itself.
“Utilizing supercomputers just isn’t so simple as utilizing a traditional pc,” Elahi mentioned.
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“It’s not a matter of simply taking a program and operating it sooner.
“So there’s truly energetic areas of analysis simply in utilizing the {hardware} tremendous nicely.”
And for such a giant West Australian venture, which can spend numerous time processing information from one other main venture additional north within the state, it’s solely becoming that Setonix attracts its identify from one of many state’s most recognisable animals – the quokka.
Setonix brachyurus is the scientific identify for the fuzzy marsupial discovered largely on Rottnest Island and made well-known internationally by a cute smile and a collection of superstar selfies.
