ANU DVC – Prof. Cram and Prof. Griffiths
with Dr. Drummond of Geoscience
Australia at the TII launch.

TerraWulf II - News

TerraWulf II A dedicated modelling and data analysis facility for the Earth Sciences

On Friday 27th June 2008 TerraWulf II a new 386 core computing cluster was launched at the Research School of Earth Sciences (ANU) by Acting Director Prof. Ross Griffiths. TerraWulf II consists of 96 dual processor dual-core IBM x3655 boxes, connected through Gigabit and Inifiniband switches.  It has a total of 24 Tb of disk storage and 1Tb of RAM and was built by RSES scientists to tackle large complex computational problems in the Earth Sciences using parallel processing techniques. Jointly funded through the Federal government’s NCRIS program, under the AuScope umbrella, and the RSES, ANU. ‘TII’, as RSES staff call it, is the latest in a long line of Geoscience computing platforms at the RSES which stretch back more than 30 years. Projects initially identified for TII include applications in seismic imaging of Earth Structure, Geospatial data analysis and mathematical geophysics.  TII is open for access by the Australian Earth Science community for projects consistent with the AuScope vision to ‘…characterise the structure and evolution of the Australian continent from surface to core in space and time.’

Prof. Malcolm Sambridge (RSES, ANU), who led the team that built TII,  said  ‘We went down a long and winding road to first find the funds and then build TII. We’re all very happy to have got there in the end’. While formally launching the facility RSES Acting Director Prof. Griffiths said that ‘Capital investment has come from three separate programs within AuScope, (Earth imaging, Geospatial and Access & Interoperability) underlining the broad support and collaborative nature of this facility’.

ANU DVC Prof. Lawrence Cram and visitors at the launch
inspect TerraWulf II with Prof. Sambridge.

Reception following the launch where videos were
shown of calculations performed on TII.

RSES Acting Director Ross Griffiths formally
launching TerraWulf II.