Charleroi SuperComputing Center
Since October 2006, the cluster has moved to a technical room providig better capacities (power, air conditioning, security). Purchase and installation of equipment for this room has been done in close coordination with CENAERO which settled its own cluster in the same room. This way the two research centres optimise their spending and gather their resources.
Characteristics
The CETIC cluster is made of 34 bi and quadri-processors interconected servers. Most of the cluster servers work under Linux and provide together a computing power of around 900 gigaflops (i.e. 900 billions operations per second) and a storage capacity of 10 Terabytes. A quadri-processor server is equipped 32Gb of RAM for applications requiring a large amount of memory.
A ground for experimentation
The architecture of the cluster was elaborated with versatility in mind. Thus, if all the components of the cluster are networked with ethernet cards like those used for desktop computers, several servers are connected by Infiniband and other by Dolphin SCI to evaluate those technologies.
Finally, the large amount of disk space not only make easier to run several projects in the same time but also allows to conduct experiments on data storage.
Open to enterprises and projects
The cluster allows CETIC to perform tests and to build proofs of concept for enterprises. The role of the cluster is also to support CETIC research activities, especially through projects of the 6th Framework-Programme of the European Union.
Links and contacts
Web portal of the cluster
To contact the cluster system administrators :
admingrid@cetic.be
