Flash
back to 1986, when the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) first
opened its doors at the north end of the UC San Diego campus.
 Then, the centerpiece was a super machine clocked at what one newspaper
article called a “mind-boggling” billion calculations
per second—a gigaflop. Actually, the peak performance was closer
to 800 million calculations per second, but still plenty quick for
then. Dozens of researchers, all from traditional disciplines such
as astrophysics and oceanography, were lining up to take advantage
of the newest supercomputer, which promised to usher in a new era
of scientific discovery.
Fast forward to 2007, and it’s easy to see how things have
changed. For one, what was “super” in 1986 is slower
than today’s laptops. Together, SDSC’s high-performance
computers are capable of a peak speed of more than 30 teraflops
(that’s trillions of calculations per second), over 30,000
times faster than the Center’s original supercomputer. And
instead of dozens of users in the queue, about 4,000 researchers
are now being served by a staff of some 400 interdisciplinary scientists,
engineers and technologists.
Two decades ago, a UCSD urban planning professor like Keith Pezzoli
wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of SDSC’s
services, particularly for data management.
Pezzoli is working with SDSC experts to apply advanced data technologies
in
a regional planning collaboration spanning the San Diego-Tijuana
region. SDSC staff have brought together diverse information
on the occurrence of toxic substances, human health and the
environment
into a unified system. This has provided a powerful tool to explore
such questions as to how hazardous materials in the environment
correlate geographically with indicators of human health.
“Being able to use SDSC’s advanced data technologies in regional
planning is opening amazing new ways of integrating very different
kinds of data from our partners,” says Pezzoli, co-organizer of
the Regional Workbench Consortium, part of UCSD’s Superfund
Basic Research Project. “We can collaborate more effectively
to improve the quality of life, on both sides of the border.” Powering Science
 The big computers housed in SDSC’s ground-floor machine room
provide the power that makes Pezzoli’s research possible.
And these machines continue their dizzying growth in speed and
memory.
SDSC’s DataStar supercomputer runs at 15.6 zeraflops— equivalent
to about 5,000 typical laptops and more than 15 times faster than
just six years ago, when the Center installed the world’s
first system for academic research to reach the one teraflop milestone.
SDSC also houses another of the world’s top supercomputers,
called IBM BlueGene Data (known inside the Center as the “Intimidata”),
which packs 17.2 teraflops and more than 6,000 processors into
just three racks of space.  Such dramatic increases in computing power are allowing researchers
to develop more realistic models for work that ranges from diagnosing
brain
disease to exploring the birth of the Universe to studying the
massive earthquakes that threaten California.
Using SDSC supercomputers, scientists from the Southern California
Earthquake Center have run the most realistic simulations ever
of a magnitude 7.7 quake on the southern San Andreas Fault. In
a preview of expected ground motion in the next “big one,” this “virtual
earthquake” revealed unexpectedly large shaking in the Los
Angeles basin.
These new insights could save lives and property through better
estimates of seismic risk, earthquake-resistant structural designs
and emergency preparations. Looking forward, SDSC has submitted a proposal—with a national
team of collaborators—to build the supercomputer of tomorrow.
Known as a “petascale” system, this machine will churn
through calculations at the unimaginable rate of one thousand trillion
calculations per second. It would take a person operating a hand-held
calculator nearly 30 million years to do the calculations this
system will complete in only one second. SDSC’s facilities are also growing. When it opens in June
2008, a building expansion will nearly double the Center’s
size to 160,000 square feet, and include special collaboration
spaces, a state-of-the-art visualization lab, and an expanded machine
room for even more powerful supercomputers. Preserving Digital Data
In the twenty-first century, mushrooming data collections have
become a major driver of progress. SDSC is an internationally
recognized leader in the vital challenge of managing and preserving
this deluge of digital information. And anyone who finds they
need information on a stack of old 5-inch floppy disks, but
has a modern laptop, can appreciate the problem of accessing
stored
data. SDSC plays a leading role in pioneering collaborations with the
Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration,
the National Science Foundation, and other partners in building
a reliable capability to preserve the nation’s digital intellectual
capital for future generations. To make this possible, SDSC’s
storage capacity was recently expanded to 25 petabytes—that’s
25,000 trillion bytes, more than 1,000 times the digital text equivalent
of the Library of Congress’s printed collection—giving
UC San Diego the largest data capacity of any academic institution
in the world. SDSC’s innovative relationship with the UCSD
Libraries has resulted in the development of a new project (Chronopolis)—focused
on preserving valuable data collections for 100 years or more. Connecting the Dots
SDSC’s growth reflects the nation’s expanding need
for new integrated capabilities known as “cyberinfrastructure”— weaving
together advanced computing, collaboration, visualization, data
management and other services to make them easily usable by researchers
in growing collaborations. “Information technology is transforming the way science is done,” says
SDSC’s director, Fran Berman, Ph.D. “As science becomes
more interdisciplinary, it takes teams of information technologists
and scientists working with end-users to provide the cyberinfrastructure
that can bring amazing new scientific and engineering discoveries
to life.”
On campus, this interdisciplinary approach is evident in the
partnerships that SDSC has with over two dozen departments, institutions
and
programs. “SDSC today is more than supercomputers and science—we work
with
communities from art to astronomy to AIDS researchers on projects
that are helping create the future,” says Berman. “We’re
proud to be a ‘national treasure’ on UCSD’s campus
and always happy to show off our state-of-the-art facilities
to visitors. At SDSC, every day brings new discoveries and a glimpse
into
the future.” 
Paul Tooby, ’71, is a senior science writer at the San Diego
Supercomputer Center.
|
