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SISTEMA DI CALCOLO PER L'ASTROFISICA NUMERICA (SCAN)

As the demand for calculation resources increased in 2000, the OAPa reasearchers launched the SCAN service (Sistema di Calcolo per l'Astrofisica Numerica; Computing System for Numerical Astrophysics). At the present day it consists of a cluster Linux based on six nodes each with 8-cores and two nodes each with 12 cores, for a total of 72 CPUs and 144 GByte of memory RAM (DDR2 667 MHz), hosted in four Twin Servers. The 64 bit nodes are based on processors Intel (Xeon Harpertown E5420, 2.5 GHz) and AMD (Opteron Barcelona 2354, 2.2 GHz). The nodes are equipped with Infiniband (Host Channel Adapter - HCA) and are interconnected through the highly efficient switch InfiniBand (Mellanox Infiniscale III DDR).

Personnel
  • Candia Renato
    		• TechnicianINAF/OAPa
  • Morale Flavio
    		• TechnicianINAF/OAPa
  • Orlando Salvatore
    		• Research AstronomerINAF/OAPa
  • Peres Giovanni
    		• Full ProfessorUniversity of Palermo
  • Reale Fabio
    		• Associate ProfessorUniversity of Palermo
  • Speziale Salvatore
    		• TechnicianINAF/OAPa


    THE COMETA CONSORTIUM AND THE PI2S2 PROJECT

    In 2005, INAF through its institutes based in Sicily (OAPa, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, and Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica di Palermo) promoted the foundation of the COMETA Consortium and outlined the PI2S2 Project, as part of the key national project 'Research, High Training and Technologic Development' funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and University. Other partners, besides INAF, are: INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics); INGV (National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology); the Universities of Palermo, Messina and Catania, and the SCIRE Consortium. The PI2S2 Project allowed the creation of an e-infrastructure in Sicily based on the GRID paradigm which can be used by researchers from OAPa. In particular, research and development centres have been built in order to carry out very important activities in the field of major research and technological applications. The centres are equipped with HPC processors, new managing and processing systems for large databases, new distributed computing technologies and new systems oriented to multimedia simulations.