HLRS is slated to establish a testing system with NEC's SX-9 vector supercomputer and x86 based clustering system. In addition, NEC will provide system interconnection technology and several software components, such as MPI, scheduler, and a software development environment in order to maximize application performance on the testing system.

The project will be supported by a wide range of resources that include federal and state funding, in addition to financial support from D-Grid, a joint initiative between the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research working alongside with German research and industry that are striving to create a resource platform for high-performance computing. Furthermore, PRACE, a partnership for advanced computing in Europe, which is similarly pursuing EU wide high performance computing (HPC) system integration, will also provide backing for HLRS.

HLRS is planning to focus on several target application areas for the Hybrid Supercomputing environment, some of which include coupled simulations such as aero-acoustic, fluid structure interaction and fluid particle simulations. The environment itself will leverage both vector and scalar architecture for computational simulation, and verify performance against both pure vector and pure scalar systems.

"The realization of a hybrid supercomputing environment will enable us to much better serve the requirements of our users, who are working on multi-physics and multi-scale problems, and to help achieve substantial breakthroughs in these important fields", stated Professor Dr. Michael Resch, Director of HLRS.

"Hybrid Supercomputing is the key concept of NEC's next generation HPC", stated Fumihiko Hisamitsu, General Manager, HPC Marketing Promotion Division, NEC. "NEC will leverage the outcome of this collaboration to provide hybrid solutions for our customers in the future", he added.

NEC together with researchers from HLRS will jointly present details of their collaboration at the NEC HPC Technical Workshop at Supercomputing 08 in Austin, Texas. This workshop takes place on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 19, 2008.