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The LRZ in a Nutshell

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The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre

Entrance of the LRZ building
Entrance of the LRZ building

The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, LRZ) provides the following services to the scientific and academic communities in Munich:

  • general IT services for more than 100,000 university customers in Munich and for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW),
  • a powerful communications infrastructure called the Munich Scientific Network (Münchner Wissenschaftsnetz, MWN), and a competence centre for data communication networks,
  • archiving and backup of large amounts of data on extensive disk and automated magnetic tape storage,
  • a technical and scientific high performance Supercomputing Centre for all German universities.

The origins of the LRZ go back to the year 1962, when Hans Piloty and Robert Sauer founded the "Electronic Computing Committee" in the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, today's "Informatics Committee". It was under their auspices that the LRZ was created as the joint computing centre for research and education for all Munich universities, funded by the Free State of Bavaria. Its name is a tribute to the great philosopher and universal scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who first presented his concept of the binary system in a scholarly piece to the Académie des Sciences in Paris. He also provided the basis for differential calculus and invented one of the first working four-operation calculating machines providing arithmetic operations.

At the reception desk
At the reception desk

IT Service Provider for the Universities

The concept of "distributed, cooperative data processing" is the basis of the IT services provided for LRZ clients. This concept implies not only connection to the worldwide internet but also constant reciprocal access to data and information, access to software which is not installed on individual computers, the common shared usage of expensive and infrequently used machinery and a great deal more. There are still some tasks for which the LRZ does act as a "centre", specifically coordination and relaying among users, such as:

  • on a technical level by operating the data communication network and common services like proxies, name server, e-mail server, web server and expensive special equipment,
  • on a personnel level through planning support and maintainance of compute clusters, training, coordination of software acquisition and campus licenses, help with security and general computer problems, development of new application areas and construction of on-site IT structures.

The LRZ also supports both Munich universities in their endeavours to efficiently employ modern infrastructures for information processing in teaching, research, and administration.

The Munich Scientific Network (MWN)

Essential to the foundations of distributed, co-operative data processing is a powerful communications infrastructure which connects decentralised systems and provides access to global networks. The LRZ employs the latest technological developments to keep the MWN fully up-to-date and able to fullfil these requirements.

Netzregal im LRZ
The central networking racks of the Munich Scientific Network (MWN)

The MWN connects the central server systems and the decentralized systems of the Munich universities and other scientific facilities (Max-Planck Institutes, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, etc.) as well as computers in 58 student residences.

The MWN encompasses:

  • more than 60 locations with over 500 buildings,
  • 600 km of fibre optic cable connecting these buildings as well as 1,100 km of fibre optic cable and 3,000 km of copper cable within them,
  • more than 1,000 active network components connecting over 80,000 systems (servers, workstations, printers, etc.).

Additionally, more than 1,600 access points, located in many different university areas, allow wireless access to the network. They also allow access to global Eduroam services.

Central Systems at the LRZ

The LRZ operates those systems where decentralized operations would be uneconomical or technically impossible (e.g., data servers, high performance systems, and archive systems). In general, these systems are equipped with extensive software packages:

  • central compute servers (see below under 'The LRZ as Supercomputing Centre'),
  • central services: operation of e-mail servers, web servers, name servers, directory servers, proxies; desktop management and other services for the Munich universities,
  • central archive systems:
    • Storage Area Network (SAN),
    • distributed file system for approximately 35,000 users,
    • robot-supported storage systems (18,000 terabyte capacity) for backup and archiving, containing over 4 billion files,
  • a variety of special-purpose peripheral machines (e.g., CAD workplaces, large format scanner, video editing, multimedia facilities, and simple and immersive 3-D graphics),
  • large-format plotters used, for instance, for poster production,
  • workplace systems for university staff and students with PCs running MS Windows and Mac OS,
  • lecture rooms with modern PC training facilities.

Consulting and Support

High turnover combined with high expectations in the user population requires the continuity and expertise of a competence centre for all information technology questions. A wide variety of courses, individual consulting, and detailed technical instructions are therefore an integral part of the competence centre. Another aspect is negotiating educational discounts for software licenses.

Information about all services is available at http://www.lrz.de.

The services of the LRZ can be used by all those affiliated with the Munich universities (approximately 80,000 students, about 26,000 university staff members, includign 8,500 scientists.

The LRZ as Supercomputing Centre

Technical and scientific high performance supercomputing is becoming more and more important. In increasingly more disciplines the employment of high performance computers is proving to be the more cost efficient, systematic, and often faster alternative to time intensive and expensive experiments. High performance supercomputers are therefore a prerequisite for research in the domain of science and technology to stay competitive.

The LRZ offers computing power on several different levels. In summary, the LRZ operates:

  • the national supercomputing system SGI Altix 4700 with a peak performance of more than 62 Tflop/s. This system will be replaced by SuperMUC, an IBM system x iDataPlex with three PFlop/s in 2011/12. It will also be used for international co-operation within PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe).
  • two more supercomputers (a SGI UltraViolet with 2,080 cores, a MEGWARE Cluster with 1,424 cores which can be accessed by researchers from all Bavarian universities,
  • an Intel IA32/EM64T-based Linux cluster which can be accessed by researchers from the Munich universities. These machines serve as a platform for:
    • running a broadly diverse spectrum of applications,
    • developing and testing serial and parallel programs.
High performance supercomputer SGI Altix 4700 at the LRZ
High performance supercomputer SGI Altix 4700 at the LRZ
Photograph: © gsiCOM/SGI

The machines on those three levels form a complete high performance power pyramid, which reflects the broad offering of computing power at the LRZ. This allows the exploitation of synergies for a wide range of tasks.

Furthermore, the LRZ also supports the conversion of appropriate algorithms to the existing supercomputer architectures. This is carried out in close collaboration with other centres and research groups, especially with the Competence Network for Technical and Scientific High Performance Computing (Kompetenznetzwerk für Technisch-Wissenschaftliches Hoch- und Höchstleistungsrechnen, KONWIHR).

Integrated into a distributed, statewide, virtual competence network, the LRZ develops and provides the know-how for a nation-wide high performance centre. The founding of the Munich Computational Sciences Centre – a collaboration of the Technical University of Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, the Max-Planck Society and its High Performance Computing Centre (RZG), and the LRZ – has lead to the highest concentration of supercomputing power within Germany.

The LRZ as Competence Centre for Networks

The LRZ recognized the central importance of networks early on and has developed into a nationwide know-how centre in this field. The LRZ was the first in Germany to pilot many new communications technologies, for instance the first X.25-2Mb/s-line, the first ATM-34Mb/s-line, the first 155Mb/s-connection and DQDB. The LRZ also piloted the world's first 2.5Gb/s-ATM-line using gigabit technology with Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM). In addition, the Customer Network Management software (CNM) for B-WiN, G-WiN, X-WiN, and GÉANT2 was developed and piloted in collaboration with the DFN association (DFN = Deutsches Forschungsnetz, German Research Network), the computing centre in Erlangen, Telekom and other industrial partners.

Research at the LRZ

As well as providing infrastructure and service provisions for its users, research also takes place at the LRZ. One example is the area of network and systems management (Prof. Dr. Heinz-Gerd Hegering).

The LRZ is also closely integrated in research in the field of High Performance Supercomputing through its own work groups in the areas of construction of efficient Linux clusters, grid computing and through collaboration in KONWIHR, as well as through the members of the Commission for Computer Science of the BAdW: Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode (architecture of high performance computers, parallelization, and tools for parallel computers), Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Bungartz (numeric programming on supercomputers), Prof. Dr. Werner Hanke (multiparticle physics), and Prof. Dr. Hendrik Zipse (computational chemistry). The LRZ is also involved in several grid computing projects such as D-Grid, DEISA2, eDEISA, PRACE, and LHC-Grid (Prof. Dr. Dieter Kranzlmüller).

In collaboration with the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the LRZ operates a library archiving and document supply system (BABS2). With the project BABS-Google, it is planned to digitize und archive more than one million books. Another project supported by the LRZ is VD16-Digital that aims to provide German literature of the 16th century.

Finally, the LRZ is a partner of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) for the DFG project IntegraTUM. This project will create a user-friendly, seamless information and communication infrastructure built upon an all-encompassing IT support structure for all university business processes. This project requires in-depth investigation of many techniques which have thus far been merely theoretical concepts to determine their practical usability. This especially holds true for the areas of directory services, multi-client capable central e-mail, e-learning, and multimedia. For these projects the LRZ received considerable external funding.