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14 February 2005

International firms use NZ supercomputer

First customers for Weta Digital and Telecom.

A US computer chip company and a Canadian biotech firm are among the
first customers of the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre set up in
downtown Wellington by Peter Jackson's special effects shop Weta
Digital and Telecom.

Weta Digital and Telecom subsidiary Gen-i unveiled the centre in
September, offering to rent out its 504 IBM blade servers to
customers in New Zealand and around the world.

The servers were used by Weta Digital to help create the special
effects for the final instalment of Lord of the Rings but are
currently surplus to requirements.

The giant number-cruncher, located off Courtenay Place, can be
connected to customers in New Zealand and overseas using dedicated
one gigabit per second data connections provided by Telecom.

Announcing the first tranche of customers, Gen-i general manager
Chris Quin said the supercomputing centre, with its 1008 Intel 2.8GHz
processors, remained the largest commercially-available
supercomputing cluster in the southern hemisphere - offering the
power of about 9000 PCs.

A "large manufacturer in the US" is using the facility for
"advanced-generation computer chip development", says Gen-i, while
the unnamed Canadian biotech firm is using it to run a variety of
gene sequencing algorithms.

New Zealand-based businesses and researchers have also been quick to
tap into the power of the supercomputer.

Auckland companies Urban Voyage and Warwick Yacht Design are using
the facility to help design a 100-foot superyacht.

The New Zealand Bioinformatics Institute, jointly funded by Auckland
University and AgResearch, is using it to test the scalability of a
computer program "that tracks the evolutionary origins and histories
of everything from HIV to whales and languages".

The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences will adapt its Globe
Claritas seismic processing software so it can be run on the
supercomputer.

"Gen-i is proud to be host to such ground-breaking research," says Mr Quin.

"The projects are as fascinating as the power of the cluster itself.
It's good for Gen-i but on a larger scale it's good for New Zealand
and helps put us on the map for scientific and industrial
computer-based research."

Weta Digital's former chief information officer, Scott Houston, who
was instrumental in getting the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre off
the ground, will step up the drive to attract overseas customers next
month.

He will address prospective customers at Europe's largest IT trade
fair, CeBIT 2005, in Hannover.

Mr Houston says most big organisations engaged in
computationally-intensive research - including the supercomputing
centre's Canadian and US customers - have their own number-crunching
facilities, but he says the Wellington computer can help them handle
peak loads.

Other potential customers, such as companies whose work involves
creating 3D designs, sometimes try to harness the processing power of
desktops on their networks to cope with big jobs. They usually find
they can get better performance from a dedicated supercomputing
facility, he says.

Gen-i is working on an online booking system which it hopes to have
ready next month which will let customers book as many processors as
they need for as long as they require over the internet.

Mr Houston says there is no theoretical reason why customers
shouldn't be able to rent out a single processor for an hour, but
Gen-i will focus on marketing the utility computing service to
organisations with "very large computational needs".

Richard Elliot, the managing director of Auckland-based new media
company Urban Voyage, says having the supercomputer on tap means the
company can create 3D simulations for clients such as boat builders
and architects quickly, and to a very high quality.

"It's the Ferrari of computers - it gives legs to creativity."

The computer has been used by Urban Voyage to create 3D simulations
of a superyacht being built by Warrick Yacht Designs, so the customer
can see what the boat might look like and join in the design process.

The five-person firm has rented out 28 processors and plans to act as
a broker for other small and medium-sized businesses which need
access to the power of the supercomputer from time to time.