HPC Impulse (HPC Impulses)

History

In March, 2011 it became known that the Chelyabinsk South Ural State University (SUSU) and the supplier of supercomputers of RSK the SCYTHIAN created HPC Impulses joint venture (from engl. HPC Impulse) on production of components for high-performance computing systems. The university possesses 34% of authorized capital of the joint venture, and RSK the SCYTHIAN – 66%^[1]. Valentin Dorokhov, the graduate of a magistracy of department of system programming of SUSU is appointed the director of the joint venture.

Federal law 217-FZ permits universities to create the small innovation enterprises, explain at the university. In addition to HPC Impulses with participation of SUSU twenty more enterprises are created today. As the director of the innovation department of SUSU Lyudmila Podzhivotova told CNews, most of them are founded with different individuals, and a share of the university in authorized capital of these enterprises same, as well as in a case with RSK the SCYTHIAN. Projects in which these enterprises are engaged lie in different areas – from IT and the medical equipment before production of semi-finished products.

The chief executive of RSK SCYTHIAN Alexey Shmelyov told CNews that at the initial stage of work of their joint venture it is going to arrange production of radiators of water cooling for the supercomputer platform SKIF-Aurora. It was developed by alliance which includes the Italian SCYTHIAN, INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM company Eurotech, RSK RAS, with assistance of Intel company. In Europe Eurotech offers this platform under the name of Aurora. As reported Eurotech in 2009, Aurora, "SKIF of row 4" and SKIF-Aurora are different brands of the same product in the different countries.

Production of radiators in Russia, by estimation of RSK the SCYTHIAN, should cost by 2-3 times cheaper, than purchase of similar components abroad. According to Shmelyov, production of radiators for SKIF-Aurora will be performed in own technopark of SUSU in Chelyabinsk. At the same time a developer of radiators is RSK the SCYTHIAN, Shmelyov says. The company will buy these radiators from the joint venture as for itself, and Eurotech is going to deliver them. "It is not pleasant to our foreign partners how radiators in Europe are made, and they expressed readiness to buy this to a component from us", - Shmelyov says.

In the further joint venture is also going to start production and unsoldering of printed circuit boards for supercomputers. However, according to Shmelyov, it is very remote perspective. In addition to production "iron", "HPC Impulses" will offer commercial services in modeling of difficult technology processes on the supercomputer.

Today in SUSU three high-performance systems, the most powerful of which is "the SKIF-Aurora of SUSU" with a performance of 24 of Tflops, are installed. Upgrade after which the power of this system will be 104 Tflops is now carried out it.

Registered at the end of 2008, RSK the SCYTHIAN by this moment performed only four deliveries of the platform, two of which – in SUSU. The dean of faculty of calculus mathematics and information science professor Leonid Sokolinsky answered a question of CNews of why for production of components and rendering services in supercomputer simulation of SUSU did not form the joint venture with more experienced company "T-Platforms", that the university did not want "go in cycles in one monopolist".

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