GENCI Launches Series of ‘Grand Challenges’ to Test Capacity of its 9-Petaflop Atos Supercomputer

June 29, 2018

June 29, 2018 – Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, and GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif), announce the forthcoming operational launch of the new Joliot-Curie supercomputer, installed at the TGCC (Très Grand Centre de Calcul du CEA) in Bruyères-Le-Châtel (Essonne, France). This BullSequana X1000 system built by Atos will enter the TOP500 ranking of the world’s largest supercomputers in June 2018.

Before it goes live, a series of Grand Challenges – large scale simulations from academic and industry research – are currently being run to check that the system is functioning correctly. These Grand Challenges represent a unique opportunity for selected scientists to gain access to the supercomputer’s resources, enabling them to make major advances, or even achieve world firsts that would be impossible to achieve with shared use.

At the end of the Grand Challenges, the Joliot-Curie supercomputer will be available to French as well as European researchers through the European research infrastructure PRACE (PartneRship for Advanced Computing in Europe), within which GENCI represents France. Researchers and industrialists will thus have at their disposal 4.5 times the computing power compared to the previous Curie system, for all uses requiring very high computing and data processing power.

“GENCI is pleased to make the most innovative supercomputer in France, a 9-petaflop BullSequana X1000, available for French and European research, helping to strengthen the global scientific competitiveness of our researchers, academics, and industrialists, and reinforce economic competitiveness based on digital developments. This supercomputer also embodies the acceleration of France’s investment in major research infrastructures for the development of a knowledge society,” explains Philippe Lavocat, CEO of GENCI.

“Atos is proud to provide French and European researchers and industrialists with the computing power they need to accelerate their research and maintain their level of innovation. The choice of GENCI, our long-standing client and partner, is testament to Atos’ technological excellence in high-performance computing,” says Philippe Vannier, Group CTO & EVP Big Data & Security Solutions at Atos.

Joliot Curie technical specifications

Installed at the TGCC (Très Grand Centre de Calcul du CEA) in Bruyères-Le-Châtel (Essonne), the initial configuration of this supercomputer offers computing power of 9 petaflops, or 9 million billion operations per second (equivalent to more than 75,000 desktop PCs). An extension of Joliot-Curie is planned for 2019 to increase its computing capacity to more than 20 petaflops.

·       The computing nodes of this set of 9 Bull Sequana X1000 cells are partly equipped with Intel Xeon Scalable processors and partly with Intel Xeon Phi manycore processors, for a total of more than 124,700 cores.

·       The Intel Xeon Scalable partition is equipped with a Mellanox InfiniBand EDR high-speed, low-latency interconnect network, while the Intel Xeon Phi partition is based on a Bull BXI (Bull Exascale Interconnect) high-speed, low-latency interconnect network.

·       Peak computing power is around 8.9 petaflops (6.86 petaflops in x86_64 technology and 2.08 petaflops in Xeon Phi technology).

·       The distributed memory capacity is in the order of 400 TB.

·       The patented “Direct Liquid Cooling” technology allows the machine to be cooled with hot water, reducing energy consumption by up to 40% compared to air cooling.

·       The entire solution runs under the new Bull SCS 5 environment based on the Linux Red Hat 7.x operating system.

The solution also includes a Lustre Cray ClusterStor storage cluster capable of delivering a throughput of over 300 GB/s for a minimum usable volume of 5 PB. 

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with approximately 100,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of around € 12 billion. European number one in Big Data, Cybersecurity, High Performance Computing and Digital Workplace, the Group provides Cloud services, Infrastructure & Data Management, Business & Platform solutions, as well as transactional services through Worldline, the European leader in the payment industry. With its cutting-edge technologies, digital expertise and industry knowledge, Atos supports the digital transformation of its clients across various business sectors: Defense, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Media, Energy & Utilities, Public sector, Retail, Telecommunications and Transportation. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify and Worldline. Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

About GENCI

GENCI (Grand équipement national de calcul intensif) is a Very Large Research Infrastructure 49% owned by the State, represented by the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation-French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI), 20% by the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), 20% by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 10% by the French Universities, which are represented by the Conférence des Présidents d’Université (CPU) , and 1% by Inria. As the national operator in charge of the implementation of national investment policy in the field of high performance computing and computational data storage, GENCI, was created in 2007 to support and implement French national HPC strategy.


Source: GENCI

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