Shaheen consists primarily of a 16-rack IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer owned and operated by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Built in partnership with IBM, Shaheen is intended to enable KAUST Faculty and Partners to research both large- and small-scale projects, from inception to realization.
Shaheen, named after the Peregrine Falcon, is the largest and most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East[1] and is intended to grow into a petascale facility by the year 2011,[2] Originally built at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, Shaheen was moved to KAUST in mid-2009.[2]
The father of Shaheen is Majid Alghaslan, KAUST's founding interim chief information officer and the University's leader in the acquisition, design, and development of the Shaheen supercomputer. Majid was part of the executive founding team for the University and the person who also named the machine [1]
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Shaheen includes the following functional elements:
Shaheen's performance and computing capabilities include[3]:
The file system and tape drive will be mounted across both the Blue Gene system and the Linux cluster. All elements of the system will be connected together on a common network backbone that is accessible from all campus buildings. The systems will also be accessible from the Internet.
The Shaheen system at KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory (KSL) is available to help KAUST users and projects, to provide training and advice, to develop and deploy applications, to provide consultation on best practices and to provide collaboration support as needed.
KAUST Faculty will have access to:
KSL plans to turn the Shaheen facility into a petascale system in the future and the facility can potentially host 500 Blue Gene/P racks[2]. Once petascale size is reached, the Shaheen facility plans to move to exaflop size (one million trillion calculations a second)[2].
KAUST, using the Shaheen systems, will focus on four specific research thrusts[1]:
Data sets for this research will be unique in that they will come from the Saudi Arabia region, focusing on areas such as oil and gas reserves, Red Sea data, and other areas distinctive to KAUST[1].
Although KAUST doesn't support any kind of discrimination against any students or faculty based on Religion, Sex, or National Origin, IBM had to comply with US Export regulations governing exporting high-end computing technology. As per the regulations [4] a restriction had to be made to deny nationals of Syria, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea from access to the supercomputer. Furthermore, Tier 3 countries organizations and governments (which include Saudi Arabia itself) are also not allowed access.
The Shaheen system at KAUST is made possible through a joint collaboration between the IBM Corporation and KAUST. In addition to IBM, KSL will be partnering with the following partner research institutions and organizations: