Atos supercomputer to help unlock secrets of the Universe
01 June 2021 - 6:00PM
Atos supercomputer to help unlock secrets of the Universe
Atos supercomputer
to help unlock secrets
of the
Universe
Paris (France),
London, (UK) 1
June 2021 – Atos today announces it has
been awarded a contract by the University of Edinburgh to deliver
its most efficient supercomputer, the BullSequana XH2000, the most
energy-efficient supercomputing system on the market. This is the
largest system dedicated to GPU computing deployed at a customer
site in the UK.
The new system will constitute the Extreme
Scaling Service of the UK’s DiRAC HPC Facility. The
state-of-the-art platform will allow scientists across the STFC
theory community to drive forward world-leading research in
particle physics, among other areas, using NVIDIA Graphics
Processing Units (GPUs) and AMD processors.
It represents a major boost to DiRAC’s computing
capacity, significantly increasing the power of the Extreme Scaling
service. DiRAC is a distributed facility with high performance
computing resources hosted by the Universities of Edinburgh,
Cambridge, Durham and Leicester. These systems support fundamental
research in particle physics, astrophysics, nuclear physics and
cosmology.
This agreement forms part of a £20 million
investment by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) World Class
Laboratories scheme, through the Science and Technology Facilities
Council (STFC), to fund an upgrade of the DiRAC facility. The
investment is delivering new systems which are up to four times
more powerful than the existing DiRAC machines, providing computing
capacity that can also be used to address immediate and emerging
issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The upgraded DiRAC-3 facility
will also be much more energy efficient than previous
generations.
The new BullSequana XH2000 will be able to
handle converged workloads simultaneously (HPC simulation,
Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning) on one single system, and
therefore enable DiRAC to overcome the limits of traditional
computing simulation and explore new applications and innovation.
With cutting-edge networking standards and the latest processing
components, it provides extreme power, speed and accuracy. It
consumes less energy than current systems as it is 100%
water-cooled using Atos’ patented DLC (Direct Liquid Cooling)
solution, which minimises global energy consumption by using warm
water up to 40°C.
Agnès
Boudot, Senior Vice President, Head of HPC
& Quantum at Atos, said, “We are pleased to be
partnering with the University of Edinburgh and the DiRAC community
to provide a high-performance computing platform to support their
world-class science programme. Our BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer
will use both CPUs and GPUs and has been configured to meet the
Extreme Scaling requirements of their scientists. This agreement
continues to demonstrate our strategic commitment to design and
build powerful and innovative supercomputers as we fast approach
the exascale era.”
Professor Mark Wilkinson,
Professor of Astrophysics at
the University of Leicester and
Director of the DiRAC
Facility, said, “It is fantastic
that Atos has been successful in the DiRAC-3 procurement at
Edinburgh and will become a valued partner of the DiRAC community.
As well as delivering a highly capable solution, we are talking to
Atos about the additional value they will bring in terms of
industry collaboration and opportunities to enhance the training of
our students to prepare them for careers in both academia and
industry.”
Professor Luigi Del
Debbio, Professor of
Theoretical Physics at
the University of Edinburgh
and Project Lead for the DiRAC-3
procurement at Edinburgh, said, “We are delighted that the
delivery of this state-of-the-art supercomputing system will allow
our scientific community in the fields of particle physics,
astronomy, cosmology and nuclear physics to pursue cutting-edge
research on a broad range of topics. Atos’ equipment and expertise
will bolster our HPC system offering at the upgraded DiRAC-3
facility, strengthening our research activity and supporting the
education and training of our students.”
As part of on-going partnership activities, Atos
will also help sponsor one student’s PhD, support a Hackathon and
deliver a series of best practice training workshops for
scientists.
Atos is committed to supporting closer
collaboration between academia and industry through the power of
supercomputing and deep learning. In the UK, the company works in
partnership with centres of excellence including The Science and
Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre, Wellcome
Genome Campus, the University of Oxford’s JADE service, and The
Pirbright Institute, among others.
***
About Atos
Atos is a global leader in digital
transformation with 105,000 employees and annual revenue of over €
11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high
performance computing, the group provides tailored end-to-end
solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in
decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a
secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos operates
under the brands Atos and Atos|Syntel. Atos is a SE (Societas
Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.
The purpose of Atos is to help design the future
of the information space. Its expertise and services support the
development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural
approach and contribute to the development of scientific and
technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its
customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live,
work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information
space.
About
DiRAC
DiRAC stands for Distributed Research Utilising
Advanced Computing. The DiRAC High Performance Computing facility
provides cutting-edge supercomputing resources for UK researchers
working on world-leading scientific calculations across a wide
range of areas including particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology
and nuclear physics. It comprises supercomputers at Cambridge,
Durham, Leicester and Edinburgh, each designed to support specific
types of calculations. DiRAC also provides access to a team of
expert research software engineers to help researchers make the
most efficient use of the available computing resources. For more
details see: https://dirac.ac.uk/.
Press
contacts:
UK&I : Helena Shadbolt
helena.shadbolt@mhpc.com +44 (0)20 3128 8799, Nick Collins
nick.collins@mhpc.com +44 (0)20 3128 8897
Global: Laura Fau
| laura.fau@atos.net | +33 6 73 64 04 18
| @laurajanefau
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Universe
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