HYDRA supercomputer
Since 2008 the Jodrell Bank Pulsar Group has had access to the HYDRA supercomputer. This STFC funded computer consists of 182 compute nodes. Each compute node consists of 2 Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz CPUs, 16 GBytes of RAM and two 2 TByte disks.
The main task of the cluster over the last five years has been to help in the data reduction for the very successful The High Time Resolution Universe Survey and has helped to discover more than 100 new pulsars and the new population of Fast Radio Bursts. Elements of the cluster have also been used to assist with improving the quality of the observations made with the Lovell Telescope using the new ROACH backend and also for processing the data from the highly ambitious LEAP project which aims to directly detect gravitational waves.
The hydra supercomputer used by the Jodrell Bank Pulsar Group
In mid-2014 the cluster will be further augmented with the addition of the latest generation of GPU hardware, greatly facility our ongoing searchs for radio pulsars and fast transients with the Lovell, Parkes, LOFAR and GMRT telescopes.
