Design of supercomputers for lattice gauge theories

As in many other fields of Computational Science, progress in lattice gauge theory is limited by the available computing resources. Therefore dedicated efforts have been made, starting already in the 1980s, to design supercomputers that are optimized for the computational requirements of lattice gauge theory. Our group participated in the design of the QCDOC chip (which served as a prototype for IBM's BlueGene/L) and led the development of the QPACE, iDataCool, and QPACE 2 supercomputers.

Midplane with a single water-cooled Xeon Phi and 5 empty slots.

These activities are pursued in close collaboration with industrial partners such as IBM, Intel, and Eurotech as well as other academic institutions, in particular the Jülich Supercomputing Centre and Wuppertal University.  A particular focus is on energy efficiency: QPACE led the Green500 list in 2009 and 2010, iDataCool allows for energy reuse by hot-water cooling, and QPACE 2 was the most energy-efficient Xeon Phi-based system in 2015.