National Capability Service Open This article is outdated - use this information at your own risk! Posted on 14 February 2008

As of Feb 4, the capability computing service comprising of an IBM Blue Gene/L and a Blue Gene/P system is open for service.

Two ICHEC support scientists, funded as part of the HEA's PRTLI-4 programme e-INIS, will help researchers harness the power of this specialised supercomputer and support will also be provided by IBM scientists working in the Dublin software laboratory. An unusual and important part of the agreement is that Irish researchers will have guaranteed access to even larger Blue Gene installations operated by IBM in the US should their applications require it.

How to gain access to the BG Infrastructure?

Access will be granted on the basis of Scientific merit (to be assessed by the Scientific Council) and only Class A projects with suitable codebases will be granted full access.

However, in order to allow researchers to get a feel for this rather different system, each Wednesday, existing ICHEC Class B PIs may gain access to the dev cab (BG /L) to assess the portability and scalability of their application before committing to prepare a full Class A application. Access will be restricted to the dev cab to minimise disruption to the work of the Capability Computing PIs. Interested Class B PIs need to give ICHEC at least one week's notice via the Helpdesk of this request.

Further details can be found here