Academic Supercomputing in Europe

Poland

Statistics

Population: 38.6 million
GDP/capita: € 9,600

Policy

The State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) determines the national research policy at the governmental level. KBN allocates funding from the Ministry of Finance to the different research organisations through the Ministries under which these organisations resort.

Since its establishment in 1991 KBN has invested in the development of the Polish infrastructure for information technology. Part of these investments was used to install high-performance computers at academic and research institutes and to develop a nation-wide academic and research network.

KBN is also in charge of the policy regarding the national research network.

Supercomputing facilities for the academia

The main supercomputing facilities are located in supercomputer centres in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Gdansk and Wroclaw.

CYFRONET, Cracow: SGI Origin 2800/128, Beowulf cluster (8 PIII/1000 + 46 Xeon/2400 + 26 Xeon/2600), Sun Fire 6800/24, HP SuperDome (8 Itanium2/1500), HP cluster (40 Itanium2/1300)
IMGW: SGI Origin 3800/100
PSNC: SGI Origin 3800/160, Cray SV1/8, SGI Altix 3300/4, Cray T3E-900/8
University of Czestochowa: Beowulf cluster (16 Athlon/1600 + 16 Athlon/1200)
University of Gdansk: Beowulf cluster (256 Itanium2/1300), SGI Origin 2000/16, Beowulf cluster (128 PIII/700)
University of Lublin: Beowulf cluster (12 Xeon/2660)
University of Warsaw: Cray X1e/32, Cray SV1/32, IBM cluster (196 Opteron/2000)
Wroclaw University of Technology: Beowulf cluster (60 Itanium2/1400 + 4 Itanium2/1300), Beowulf cluster (26 Itanium2/1400 + 4 Xeon/2400), SGI Origin 2000/32, Beowulf cluster (40 Xeon/2800 + 18 Xeon/1700 + 2 Xeon/1800)

Acquisition and upgrade plans

Wroclaw University of Technology: System with 64 Itanium2 processors ordered.

National academic network

PIONIER is the Polish scientific network. It connects 21 Metropolitan Area Networks using a 10 Gbps optical infrastructure. International connectivity is through a 10 Gbps link to GÉANT. The network is operated by PSNC. The 2004 budget is € 7.1 million.

http://www.man.poznan.pl/resources/index.html

National GRIDs

The project SGI Grid for Virtual Laboratory Applications started end 2002 and will last until November 2005. It will use a hardware platform based on a cluster of SGI systems. Funding is provided by KBN and SGI. The academic participants in the project are: IMGW, PSNC, Cyfronet, Wroclaw Centre for Networking and Supercomputing, CI TASK (Gdansk) and the Technical University of Lódz.

The CLUSTERIX project builds a national cluster of Linux Systems. The participants are 12 Polish supercomputing centers (Technical University of Bialystok, Technical University of Czestochowa (coordinator), CI TASK (Gdansk), Technical University of Lódz, University of Lublin, Cyfronet, University of Opole, PSNC, Technical University of Szczecin, Warsaw University of Technology, Wroclaw Supercomputing and Networking Center, University of Zielona Gora)

List of abbreviations

IMGW Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Warsaw.
PSNC Poznan Supercomputing and Network Center

Contacts and Addresses

Prof. Dr. Stefan Wegrzyn
(Chairman of the Committee on Computer Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
Institute of Theoretical and Applied Computer Science
ul. Baltycka 5
44-100 Gliwice

Dr. Maciej Stroinski
Technical Director PSNC
Ul. Noskowskiego 10
61-704 Poznan

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