With its 14,762 processors, the new CSCS supercomputer is capable of performing 141 trillion floating-point operations per second (Teraflop/s). This huge performance is necessary to compute complex science and engineering models in areas such as climate, medicine and biology, chemistry, physics and material sciences. The ability to perform such simulations represents a strategic competitive advantage for Swiss science and economy. For this reason, the Swiss Federal Council decided to extend the capacity of CSCS in the framework of the second economic support package in 2009. The increased computer power will be made available to academic research, but also support collaborations with industry.

Memory equivalent to 30,000 laptops

The new supercomputer "Monte Rosa" belongs to the youngest generation of a successful series of Cray XT installations at CSCS. It combines highly efficient processors (type AMD Opteron) with a communication network specially developed for high performance, massively parallel computing. The computer has a main memory of 29.5 Terabyte, which approximately equals that of 30,000 laptops. Disk storage of 290 Terabyte is provided to save the data generated by its enormous compute power.

Although "Monte Rosa" is nearly ten times as powerful as its predecessor, it is about the same size. Its compact architecture required a new liquid cooling con-cept, which is significantly more efficient and more environmentally friendly than aircooling used in previous models.

Installed in record time

Once the funds became available in March 2009, the new system was installed in record time in May, and was made available to users on July 1. In a few days the system was already being used to full capacity, which was not very surprising considering the constant increase of requests for computing power by the universities. The CRAY XT5 model, however, permits to cope with the problem, and an upgrade to 212 Teraflops thanks to newest technology processors com-pleted before the end of the year.

In the ranking of the 500 fastest computers worldwide "Monte Rosa" occupies the 4th place in Europe and the 23rd place worldwide. CSCS has celebrated this important success with representatives from science, politics and industry on September 18th 2009 in Manno, near Lugano.