Media Contact: Marty Goolsby Communications and Media Relations
PICS Team Helps Set World Record in Molecular Dynamics on ORNL's
New Paragon(Tm) MP System OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 8, 1994 A team
of researchers from the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)
and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook have
set a new world record for system size in molecular dynamics,
using Intel's 1,024-node Paragon supercomputer. Molecular
dynamics, which models the interactions between the atoms in a
chemical, biological or solid state system, is a cornerstone of
applications ranging from the study of DNA-protein interactions
to the design of new materials. In two record-breaking runs,
members of the Partnership in Computational Sciences (PICS)
consortium performed molecular dynamics simulations for systems
of 200 million and 400 million particles, with each simulation
step taking 80 and 160 seconds, respectively. These results far
exceed recently