Massive parallel computing
CSC's supercomputers are dedicated to run powerful parallel applications (such as simulations of materials physics). With parallel computing, the computing capacity can be increased a 100-fold compared with the computing done on a single processor. Parallel computing reduces the time needed to solve a complicated problem from several CPU years to few weeks. CSC's most powerful computer Cray XT is capable of computing 10,000 billion floating point operations per second. It equals to 1800 Pentium P4 processors.
Massive memory
The massive memory of supercomputers benefits particularly researches who create models of physical phenomena involving massive data and large databases. Powerful numerical simulations give insight, e.g., into the behavior of astrophysical bodies, new molecules and their properties, structural engineering, and problems related to computational fluid dynamics. Supercomputers also enable investigations of whole ecosystems or global environmental models.
Archiving data
Scientific computing involves compilation of large amounts of data, and tape technology is needed to save data in a cost-effective and secure manner. Researchers can archive the data they need for their computing. A new application area for the server is archiving Finnish www pages in collaboration with the National Library of Finland. CSC provides three petabytes of data storing capacity. It corresponds to data on 23 billion pages in a book. If the books were placed on a bookshelf the shelf has to be a 1,000 kilometers long. A petabyte corresponds to 1,540,000 CDs. If one CD is about one mm thick, this would amount to a pile more than 1.5 kilometers high.
