Statoil has upgraded its seismic processing cluster – now said to be Scandinavia’s largest high performance computer (HPC). The system comprises 264 nodes, each equipped with an HP Proliant DL380G5 computer with a 3 GHz, quad core Intel Xeon processor and 32 GB RAM.
Linux
Disk storage is provided by a Panasas ActiveStor 3000 Parallel Storage Cluster with 77 terabytes onboard and 4GBps bandwidth. The operating system is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.4 with Cisco OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) InfiniBand connectivity running across Gigabit Ethernet and CISCO switches.
Maloney
Statoil senior VP Bill Maloney said, ‘E&P challenges have been the main driver for acquiring this kind of processing power. The machine is already providing seismic images of prospects in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are huge problems mapping beneath the salt layers.’ Processing GOM data is performed by geophysicists in the Statoil ‘Find’ project in Norway with input from geologists in Houston.
Sollie
Staff geophysicist Roger Sollie added, ‘The machine plays a decisive role in providing better images of the geology several kilometers beneath the surface, especially in areas with complex geology.’ Performance is quoted as 12.7 (peak) and 10.4 (sustained) teraflops.
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