Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing

139

Chapter 9

Industrial High-

Performance Computing

Activities in Korea

Sang Min Lee

9.1 A BRIEF HISTORY ON THE KISTI NATIONAL INSTITUTE

OF SUPERCOMPUTING AND NETWORKING

e Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI)

National Institute of Supercomputing and Networking (NISN) began in a

computer room of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)

in June 1967. Since KIST’s establishment in February 1966, this computer

room evolved into a central institute leading the Korean information soci-

ety, with computing technology magnied as one of its major research

CONTENTS

9.1 A Brief History on the KISTI National Institute of

Supercomputing and Networking 139

9.2 Korea SME Status and Strategic Positioning for SME Support 141

9.3 An Industrial Supercomputing Service Model 144

9.3.1 Supercomputing R&D Environment for SME 145

9.3.2 Joint Research and Consulting 147

9.3.3 Engineering Education and Training 148

9.3.4 Operation of Coordinative Committee 148

9.4 Success Stories 149

9.4.1 Usage Eects of Supercomputing 149

9.4.2 Representative Industry Outcomes 149

9.5 Conclusion 151

140 ◾ Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing

areas. e KIST computer room was reformed as the System Engineering

Research Institute (SERI) in November 1984 and started in earnest to

carry out supercomputing operations in 1988. SERI played a big part in

establishing the validity of centralizing national computing and research

network resources in a national center by introducing and operating the

rst supercomputing system in South Korea in 1988.

is institute pulled the supercomputing application ability up to the

level of leading countries and contributed to open global research net-

works, helping South Korea become a leading country in the information

industry in the twenty-rst century. South Korea started its supercom-

puting operations with the introduction of the CRAY-2S system in 1988.

e CRAY-2S was actively used in various research elds and in many

industrial areas. CRAY-2S reached its maximum capacity as a result of

an increasing number of users and workloads, creating a strong desire

to introduce a new supercomputing system. As a result, in 1993, Korea’s

second supercomputer, the CRAY-YMP C90, was installed.

With the introduction of the CRAY-YMP C90 in 1994, the second

phase of the Korean supercomputer operation program began. e rst

phase of the program (from 1988 to 1993) entailed fostering the user

environment of the supercomputer and activating the use of the super-

computer, whereas the second phase focused on research and technology

development related to supercomputing and elevated supercomputing

applications to the level of leading countries. To maximize the use of the

supercomputer, user groups in terms of specic research domains were

organized. ese domain groups were encouraged to contribute by shar-

ing their supercomputing technology and research products.

e ratio of economic outcome to investment was reported to be

around 38:1 in the period of the Korean supercomputing program from

1998 to 2000. Korean government suciently invested in the supercom-

puting program, and the active support from Korean government made

the program larger and stronger. KISTI encouraged supercomputer users

to eciently utilize the supercomputer and increased internal researchers’

competence to extend the supercomputing basis. From 2001 to 2003, the

third Korean supercomputing system, IBM p690 and NEC SX series, was

successfully introduced. From 2009 to present, KISTI has operated the

fourth Korean supercomputing system, which consisted of a large SUN

Linux cluster and IBM p595 systems (Table 9.1).

KISTI could hereby provide supercomputing resources to Korean com-

putational scientists and industrial R&D people. With the promotion of