June 23, 2020 — The new supercomputer, a BullSequana XH2000, provided by Atos, will give Norwegian researchers more than 5 times more compute capacity than previously, with a theoretical peak performance of 6.2 petaFLOPs.
This new system provides UNINETT Sigma2 with a powerful environment for large-scale computing. “It is of the utmost importance for Norwegian researchers to have access to e-infrastructure at a high international level in order to be competitive, and a continuing growing number of research groups will benefit greatly from the computational power of the new system”, says Gunnar Bøe, Managing Director of UNINETT Sigma2.
The supercomputer, named after Mary Ann Elizabeth (Betzy) Stephansen, the first Norwegian woman with a Ph.D in mathematics, is installed at NTNU in Trondheim, will be available to users before the next allocation period.
Betzy technical specifications
- The system comprises of 1344 compute nodes each equipped with 2 x 64 core, 2nd generation AMD EPYC processors, code name ‘Rome’, for a total of 172032 cores installed on a total footprint of only 14.78m2. The total compute power will be close to 6.2 petaFLOPS.
- The system will consume 952kW of power and 95% of the heat will be captured to water and reused.
- The computes nodes are interconnected with the new generation of Mellanox HDR InfiniBand technology.
- Betzy’s data storage is provided by a high performance DDN parallel Lustre file system with 2.5 PB capacity
The TOP500 winner is from Japan
The Japanese system Fuagki, installed at RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, captures the TOP500 Crown as the most powerful supercomputer in the world with a CPU-only system equipped with ARM SVE chips.
The 55th edition of the TOP500 was announced at ISC High Performance Digital Conference 22 June.
About Sigma2
UNINETT Sigma2 AS (Sigma2) has a strategic responsibility for and manages the national e-infrastructure for large-scale data- and computational science in Norway. In addition, Sigma2 coordinates Norway’s participation in international collaborations on e-infrastructure. Sigma2 is mandated to provide services for high-performance computing and data storage to individuals and groups involved in research and education at all Norwegian universities and colleges, and other publicly funded organizations and projects. The Sigma2 activities are jointly financed by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and the Sigma2 consortium partners, which are the universities in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø. The business is run non-profit. Sigma2 is a subsidiary of Uninett AS and has its head office in Trondheim.
Source: Vigdis Guldseth, Sigma2