Thanks to the new Bull supercomputer for the Jülich Research Center

Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany has chosen Bull to supply a 100 Teraflops-capacity supercomputer to host applications for the European Union's Fusion project.

The main aim of the EU Fusion project is to speed up research into nuclear fusion - a high-potential way of generating energy which should, in the long-term, enable us to meet the challenges both of sustainable development and the disappearance of fossil fuels.

From the moment it is deployed, the Bull HPC-FF supercomputer will be used to validate the very latest nuclear fusion computer simulation models. It will enable research in the area of plasma turbulence, one of the major challenges confronting physicists today. The new supercomputer will also be used in the areas of fast particle physics, which dominates plasmas in thermonuclear combustion, and materials physics.

"The Jülich Supercomputing Centre is proud to host and operate the Bull HPC-FF for the benefit of the fusion community. Our operation and support teams will assure the most effective usage of this best-of-breed technology delivered by Bull," said Thomas Lippert, leading scientist and director of the Jülich supercomputing centre.

"Rated by HPCWire as one of the five global companies to watch in 2009, and the only non-American firm - having won 120 customers in 15 countries across three continents in under four years - Bull is becoming one of the front runners in the world of computer simulation," explained Didier Lamouche, Bull Chairman and CEO. "We are honoured by the Jülich Research Center's decision, which means Bull will be a major contributor to the European Fusion Community. This represents a major leap forward in the development of a complete European ecosystem in computer simulation," he continued.

The Bull HPC-FF supercomputer will be a key component in the preparation of the IFERC (International Fusion Energy Research Center) project: an international Data Center being established as part of a collaboration between Europe and Japan in relation to the ITER program. In particular, the Bull HPC-FF supercomputer will enable the Fusion community to prepare for using a Petaflops-scale supercomputer destined to equip the IFERC in years to come. The simulations it will carry out will enable the models developed by researchers to be refined, and will guarantee the ITER can be 'utilized' under optimum conditions: a vital imperative given that each ITER experiment will cost in the region of €500,000.

"The HPC-FF supercomputer, whose usage will be organized under the terms of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) will enable us to make progress on a number of key scientific questions, and to speed up research into nuclear fusion," Jérôme Paméla, Leader of EFDA explained. "These new resources will position Europe amongst the scientific leaders when it comes to supporting the ITER project."