Features:

HOLLYWOOD CELEB HELPS BOOST NEW SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER

Peter Jackson, the director and mastermind behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and his company, Weta Digital, have teamed with Telecom New Zealand susidiary Gen-i to build a new supercomputing facility. The New Zealand Supercomputing Centre, unveiled officially on Monday, will be located in Wellington, New Zealand and will be rented by clients throughout NZ and internationally.

The center ranks 80th on the top 500 list of most powerful computers and holds the title of the largest supercomputing cluster in the southern hemisphere available for commercial hire. New York clients are already eyeing the advantages that the cluster may offer.

The supercomputing cluster is made up of 504 IBM blade servers, each containing 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, 6 gigabytes of memory and 40 gigabytes of storage. Weta Digital used the blades, capable of performing 2.8 trillion calculations per second, to create the special effects for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Upgrades are expected now that Weta Digital and Gen-i have officially signed the deal. The addition of new blades could push the supercomputer in to the top 10 list of largest computers in the world.

The supercomputer will employ "on demand" availability, allowing universities research organizations and businesses to use however much computing capacity is necessary. Bioinformatics, computer-aided engineering and economic and financial modeling will be among the fields of research involved.

The companies hope that the center's establishment will push New Zealand to a leadership position in the supercomputing arean.

Telecom NZ houses the supercomputer in Wellington, and it can be accessed from any of NZ's main centers through 1Gb per second data pipes, or by Telecom NZ's corporate intranet.

In order to involve international customers, including prospective users in New York, Telecom NZ will implement dedicated data lines in cities overseas as well.

Weta Digital plans to benefit from the center's implementation. The huge amount of processing power in Wellington will aid Peter Jackson and his colleagues while they film upcoming movies, including his King Kong remake.