Paris, France, June 6, 2019

Atos, a glo­bal lea­der in digi­tal trans­for­ma­ti­on, has signed a 4‑year con­tract to deli­ver its latest super­com­pu­ter, the Bull­Se­qua­na XH2000, to Uni­nett Sigma2, the natio­nal e‑infrastructure pro­vi­der in Nor­way. The super­com­pu­ter will be Norway’s most powerful super­com­pu­ter and pro­vi­de Nor­we­gi­an rese­ar­chers with an enhan­ced com­pu­ting capa­ci­ty to enable new inno­va­ti­on breakthroughs.

Modern rese­arch requi­res signi­fi­cant com­pu­ting power and gene­ra­tes lar­ge amounts of data. The­r­e­fo­re, busi­nesses need to opti­mi­ze the effi­ci­en­cy of their appli­ca­ti­on work­flows as well as ener­gy con­sump­ti­on, whilst mini­mi­zing TCO (Total Cost of Owner­ship). With the Bull­Se­qua­na XH2000 sys­tem, which is equip­ped with next-gene­ra­ti­on AMD EPYC™ pro­ces­sors, Atos is pro­vi­ding a super­com­pu­ter which will give Nor­we­gi­an rese­ar­chers more than 5  times more capa­ci­ty than pre­vious­ly, with a theo­re­ti­cal peak per­for­mance of 5.9  Peta­Flops. Tog­e­ther this will enable sci­en­tists a powerful new tool for rese­arch initia­ti­ves ran­ging from mode­ling cli­ma­te chan­ge and dis­co­ve­ring new can­cer drugs to gai­ning a bet­ter under­stan­ding of the ori­g­ins of the universe.

“This new solu­ti­on pro­vi­des Uni­nett Sigma2 with a powerful envi­ron­ment for data-inten­si­ve 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. This sys­tem will help us catch up some of the cur­rent lack of resour­ces, but signi­fi­cant increase in fun­ding is neces­sa­ry to reme­dy the lack of resour­ces.  said Gun­nar Bøe, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Uni­nett Sigma2.

“Our new Bull­Se­qua­na XH2000 includes the latest pro­ces­sor and acce­le­ra­tor archi­tec­tures to pro­vi­de more com­pu­ting power to sup­port users go bey­ond the limits of tra­di­tio­nal simu­la­ti­on. As the lea­ding Euro­pean super­com­pu­ter manu­fac­tu­rer, we are proud to be con­tri­bu­ting to the com­pe­ti­ti­ve­ness of Nor­way and the Nor­we­gi­an rese­arch and aca­de­mic com­mu­ni­ty.” said Pierre Barn­abé, Seni­or Exe­cu­ti­ve Vice-Pre­si­dent, Head of Big Data & Cyber­Se­cu­ri­ty Divi­si­on at Atos.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ly friendly

One signi­fi­cant and important aspect of this super­com­pu­ter instal­la­ti­on is ener­gy reco­very. First­ly, it is 100% water-coo­led using Atos’ paten­ted DLC (Direct Liquid Coo­ling) solu­ti­on, which mini­mi­zes glo­bal ener­gy con­sump­ti­on by using warm water. Second­ly, all the elec­tri­ci­ty used for this new sys­tem will come from hydro-elec­tric power plants. Addi­tio­nal­ly, the new machi­ne will be able to reco­ver most of the ener­gy used for cal­cu­la­ti­on and coo­ling, using hot water to heat the buil­dings at the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus at NTNU (Nor­we­gi­an Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence & Technology).

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Tech­ni­cal specifications:

• The sys­tem com­pri­ses of 1344 com­pu­te nodes each equip­ped with 2 x 64core, next-gene­ra­ti­on AMD EPYC™ pro­ces­sors, code name ‘Rome’, for a total of 172032 cores instal­led on a total foot­print of only 14.78 m². The total com­pu­te power will be clo­se to 6Pflops.
• The sys­tem will con­su­me 952kW of power and 95% of the heat will be cap­tu­red to water.
• The com­pu­tes nodes will be inter­con­nec­ted with the new gene­ra­ti­on of Mel­lan­ox HDR technology.
• The data manage­ment solu­ti­on will rely on a DDN sto­rage with a Lust­re par­al­lel file sys­tem of more than 2.5PB.

About Atos

Atos is a glo­bal lea­der in digi­tal trans­for­ma­ti­on with over 110,000 employees in 73 count­ries and annu­al reve­nue of over € 11 bil­li­on. Euro­pean num­ber one in Cloud, Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and High-Per­for­mance Com­pu­ting, the Group pro­vi­des end-to-end Orchestra­ted Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Busi­ness Appli­ca­ti­ons and Digi­tal Work­place solu­ti­ons. The group is the World­wi­de Infor­ma­ti­on Tech­no­lo­gy Part­ner for the Olym­pic & Para­lym­pic Games and ope­ra­tes under the brands Atos, Atos Syn­tel, and Uni­fy. 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 tech­no­lo­gy space. Its exper­ti­se and ser­vices sup­port the deve­lo­p­ment of know­ledge, edu­ca­ti­on as well as mul­ti­cul­tu­ral and plu­ra­li­stic approa­ches to rese­arch that con­tri­bu­te to sci­en­ti­fic and tech­no­lo­gi­cal excel­lence. Across the world, the group enables its cus­to­mers, employees and col­la­bo­ra­tors, and mem­bers of socie­ties at lar­ge to live, work and deve­lop sus­tain­ab­ly and con­fi­dent­ly in the infor­ma­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy space. 

About Uni­nett Sigma2

Uni­nett Sigma2 is respon­si­ble for acqui­ring, ope­ra­ting and deve­lo­ping the natio­nal e‑infrastructure for com­pu­ta­tio­nal sci­ence in Nor­way, and offers ser­vices in super­com­pu­ting and data storage.
In clo­se col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ber­gen, UiT The Arc­tic Uni­ver­si­ty of Nor­way and NTNU, Uni­nett Sigma2 offers an attrac­ti­ve and sus­tainable e‑infrastructure and e‑infrastructure ser­vices to rese­arch and hig­her edu­ca­ti­on in Nor­way. Annu­al cos­ts of invest­ment and ope­ra­ti­on of natio­nal e‑infrastructure are on avera­ge 150 mil­li­on NOK year­ly and are finan­ced by the Nor­we­gi­an Rese­arch Coun­cil and the four uni­ver­si­ties. Uni­nett Sigma2 leads and coor­di­na­tes the Nor­we­gi­an par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on in inter­na­tio­nal coope­ra­ti­on within the e‑infrastructure.

Press cont­acts:

Atos: Glo­bal — Lau­ra Fau | laura.fau@atos.net | +33 6 73 64 04 18 | @laurajanefau

Uni­nett Sigma2: Gun­nar Bøe, Mana­ging Direc­tor Uni­nett Sigma2, +47 911 87 850
Stein Inge Knar­bakk, Seni­or Pro­ject Mana­ger, Uni­nett Sigma2, +47 920 57 739