CESGA stands for "Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia" (The Supercomputing Center of Galicia). It is a high performance computing center in Galicia (Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

).

Its most important features are the supercomputer

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...

 FinisTerrae

FinisTerrae

Finisterrae was the 100th supercomputer in Top500 ranking in November 2007. Running at 12.97 Teraflops, it would rank at position 258 on the list as of June 2008. It is also the third most powerful supercomputer in Spain...

 and the "Superordenador Virtual Gallego".
Finisterrae is nowadays the third most powerful supercomputer in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, and it was initially ranked 100th according to the Top500

TOP500

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...

 when installed on November 2007.
CESGA provides advanced computing services to the Galician Scientific Community, Galician Universities and to the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas - CSIC

CSIC

The Spanish National Research Council is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe...

).

CESGA also runs i-math, a Grid computing project with an initiative to approach Grid technologies to mathematics researchers, and operates the i-math Portal, a Grid Portal based on P-GRADE Portal

P-GRADE Portal

The P-GRADE Grid Portal is a grid portal solution that allows users to manage the whole life-cycle of executing a parallel application in a grid, enabling the creation, execution and monitoring of workflows through high-level Web interfaces....

 technology. (See also: Grid computing

Grid computing

Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...

)

Most important functions

• To promote and spread the use of technologies of high performance computing and advanced communications. One of this examples is GalNIX, a neutral point of Internet traffic interchange for Galicia. The aim of GalNIX is to facilitate the data interchange between the Internet Service Providers which operate inside the Galician region. Some of the companies included here are Jazztel
  Jazztel
  Jazztel is a telecom that operates in Spain offering triple play services . Jazztel was founded in 1998 by Martin Varsavsky. Jazztel is a Spanish company that is owned by a British company called Jazztel p.l.c. It was incorporated under the laws of England and Wales in July 1998. It is Registered...
  
  , "R cable y telecomunicaciones", Retegal and Retevisión.
• To promote and spread the use of technologies related to the Information Society, including: electronic commerce, e-learning and geographical information systems.

Computer Systems

The following table shows some of the systems installed in CESGA. Since some systems were installed around 10 years ago some information may be outdated.

Computer system	Description	Installation date
Compaq HPC 320	Consists of a cluster of 8 servers hosting 32 Alpha EV68 1 GHz processors	2002
Cluster Beowulf	A cluster consisting of 17 Pentium III 1,13 GHz processors. The nodes are interconnected using a Myrinet network.	2002
CESGA CrossGrid Node	Consists of a cluster of 20 Intel Pentium III 1,13 processors interconnected using a Gigabit network	2002
SVG	The "Supercomputador Virtual Gallego" consists of 54 Intel Pentium III processors from 550 MHz up to 1 GHz interconnected through Myrinet and Fast Ethernet networks.	2000 (first phase)
CheapTB	Consists of 1 Intel Pentium III 1,2 GHz and 4 Pentium IV 2 GHz processors interconnected by a Myrinet network. The storage is made using 32x180 GB disks.	2003
Storagetek 9710	It is a tape storage system consisting of 195x220 GB and 375x80 GB cartridges	1999
HP Integrity Rx5670	Consists of 4 Intel Itanium2 processors interconnected using Fibre Channel.	2004
Storage array EVA 3000	Consists of 112x146 Fibre Channel disks configured in a RAID RAID RAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit... 5 system.	2003
Sun Microsystems HPC 4500	12 x UltraSPARC II 400 MHz processors	1999
Sun Enterprise 3500	4 x 400 MHz UltraSPARC II interconnected using an Ethernet -Gigabit connection	1999
HP Cluster Superdome	Consists of 2 SMP nodes which host 128 Intel Itanium2 1500 MHz processors. The connection is made using an Infiniband network.	2003

Location

CESGA is located in the University of Santiago de Compostela at the following address:

Avenida de Vigo, s/n Campus Sur 15705 Santiago de Compostela A Coruña - Spain

• Tel: +34 981 56 98 10
• Fax: +34 981 59 46 16

External links

• CESGA
• CESGA i-math Portal