Total constructs the "largest commercial supercomputer globally" in the field of oil industry.
In a groundbreaking move, French oil giant Total has revealed Pangea, the most powerful commercial supercomputer in the world. This state-of-the-art machine, built by SGI, boasts a computing capacity of 2.3 petaflops (2,300 trillion fluid operations per second), making it a formidable tool in the quest for energy innovation.
Pangea's 110,000 processor cores, based on Intel's Xeon E5-2670 chip, are housed on SGI's ICE X high-performance computing platform. The system also boasts an impressive 442 terabytes of memory and 7 petabytes of storage, providing ample space for the vast amounts of data required for complex simulations.
The oil industry faces several technical challenges, and Pangea was specifically designed to meet these head-on. It will be used by Total's exploration division to visualize geo-physical imaging data, aiding in the exploration and production of oil and gas.
One of the primary challenges lies in balancing extreme computational demands with energy efficiency and environmental impact. Pangea must handle complex simulations such as reservoir storage capacity, well integrity for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, methane emissions reduction, wind flow for wind farm siting, biofuels and polymers research, and seismic and geological modeling related to exploration and production. These simulations require immense computational power and accuracy.
Another challenge is integrating hybrid computing solutions. Pangea 4 is a hybrid system, combining an on-site physical machine with cloud computing resources (Pangea@Cloud). This hybrid approach poses technical challenges in workflow management, data transfer, and maintaining cutting-edge technology while reducing carbon footprint.
Energy efficiency is another critical factor. Pangea 4 uses 87% less electricity than its predecessor, reflecting the challenge of maximizing supercomputing power without excessive energy consumption and environmental harm.
Total's president of the division, Yves-Louis Darricarrère, hailed Pangea as a significant leap forward in performance. Philippe Malzac, CIO Exploration and Production for Total, highlighted the efficiency of the SGI ICE X system, providing high computational power with minimal energy usage, as a key factor in selecting it for the Pangea system.
The global spending on supercomputers grew 30% to $5.6 billion during 2012, primarily driven by governments and universities recognizing the need for supercomputing capabilities for economic growth. As the world transitions towards cleaner energy sources, supercomputers like Pangea will play a crucial role in driving this change.
[1] Source: Total press release, "Total unveils Pangea, the world's most powerful commercial supercomputer for energy transition," Total, [date].
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