From April, 16, 2012 a new supercomputing system will be started operation in the Institute for Materials Research (IMR), Tohoku University (Director Mitsuo Niinomi), which aims to contribute to materials modeling and simulation. The new system has a total theoretical operation speed of 300TFLOPS, which is a top ranked machine in materials research institutions in Japan and worldwide and 40 times faster compared to the previous system at the Institute.
The Institute accelerates research to solve energy and environmental problems by using this new system which conducts theoretical design of solar cell, fuel battery, and more. For example, the necessary time to design new materials for fuel cell will be reduced 10 times, and fundamental progress in computer simulation works with efficient research environment will be realized. As the central supercomputer in the Institute, HITACHI SUPER TECHNICAL SERVER SR16000 Model M1 was selected, which is produced by Hitachi, Ltd. (President Hiroaki Nakanishi).
