Düs­sel­dorf and Tokyo, June 18, 2019 — NEC Cor­po­ra­ti­on (NEC; TSE: 6701) today announ­ced that Deut­sches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt (DLR) — the Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter — has award­ed NEC with the deli­very and instal­la­ti­on of a new High Per­for­mance Com­pu­ting (HPC) clus­ter solu­ti­on, which con­sti­tu­tes one of the lar­gest recent HPC ten­ders in Europe.

NEC will deli­ver and deploy a direct-liquid coo­led HPC solu­ti­on com­pri­sing 2,300 Giga­byte com­pu­te nodes based on the AMD EPYC™ 7601 pro­ces­sor, tota­ling up to 147,200 cores within a bud­get of more than 20 mil­li­on Euros. The new DLR clus­ter will be hos­ted and admi­nis­tra­ted by the Cen­ter for Infor­ma­ti­on Ser­vices and High Per­for­mance Com­pu­ting (ZIH) at the new Dat­a­cen­ter of the Tech­ni­sche Uni­ver­si­tät Dres­den (TU Dres­den), accor­ding to the stra­te­gic sci­en­ti­fic co-ope­ra­ti­on bet­ween NEC and DLR.

The very chal­len­ging frame con­di­ti­ons for power and ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of DLR and ZIH requi­res most of the total solu­ti­on to be direct-liquid coo­led (DLC), at a warm water inlet tem­pe­ra­tu­re of 35°C. NEC employs a uni­que coo­ling solu­ti­on with CPUs coo­led direct­ly and all other com­pon­ents employ­ing secon­da­ry water coo­ling in clo­sed racks. Ther­mal insu­la­ti­on of the racks mini­mi­zes inef­fi­ci­ent air coo­ling in the com­pu­ter room. The com­ple­te manage­ment of the solu­ti­on includes such func­tions as a soft­ware envi­ron­ment for con­trol­ling the power con­sump­ti­on at run­time. NEC part­ne­red with Coo­lIT Sys­tems and Giga­byte to design Pas­si­ve Cold­p­la­te Loops for ser­vers equip­ped with AMD EPYC CPUs. The enti­re sys­tem was deve­lo­ped to work with high coo­lant tem­pe­ra­tures to pro­vi­de addi­tio­nal oppor­tu­ni­ties for heat re-use. Some non-DLC com­pon­ents are coo­led by a ther­mal­ly insu­la­ted liquid side-coo­ler solu­ti­on sup­pli­ed by Schä­fer IT.

The com­ple­te solu­ti­on will include 116 lar­ge-memo­ry nodes with a total of 58 Tera­byte of main memo­ry, 20 visua­liza­ti­on nodes with two NVIDIA P5000 GPUs for remo­te visua­liza­ti­on with NICE DCV, and a Lust­re-based par­al­lel HPC sto­rage from Data Direct Net­works, with a total capa­ci­ty of 17 Peta­byte and an aggre­ga­ted band­width of 180 Gigabyte/s for the fas­test par­ti­ti­on. The high-speed inter­con­nect is con­fi­gu­red as a Mel­lan­ox HDR fabric in a Dra­gon­fly+ setup.

“NEC has com­ple­te­ly con­vin­ced us with their exper­ti­se and by the design of the total solu­ti­on, which excel­lent­ly fits to our very spe­ci­fic and high­ly chal­len­ging demands, espe­ci­al­ly for the ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and total power con­sump­ti­on manage­ment that are defi­ned by the hos­ting envi­ron­ment. The­re are few HPC solu­ti­on pro­vi­ders in the world capa­ble of deli­ve­ring a solu­ti­on like this, and NEC is sure­ly one of them,” says Pro­fes­sor Dr. Nor­bert Kroll, acting direc­tor of the DLR Insti­tu­te of Soft­ware Methods for Pro­duct Vir­tua­liza­ti­on in Dresden.

“We are very proud that DLR has cho­sen NEC as the HPC sup­pli­er for this very big pro­ject. DLR is one of the most renow­ned aero­space insti­tu­tes in the world, with an impec­ca­ble repu­ta­ti­on in high-end rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, and we feel hono­u­red to be ent­rus­ted with the rea­liza­ti­on of this high­ly inno­va­ti­ve and deman­ding HPC solu­ti­on,” said Yui­chi Koji­ma, Vice Pre­si­dent, HPC EMEA, NEC Deutschland.

About DLR
The Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter (Deut­sches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) is the natio­nal aero­nau­tics and space rese­arch cent­re of the Fede­ral Repu­blic of Ger­ma­ny. Its exten­si­ve rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment work in aero­nau­tics, space, ener­gy, trans­port, secu­ri­ty and digi­ta­li­sa­ti­on is inte­gra­ted into natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal coope­ra­ti­ve ven­tures. DLR is also respon­si­ble for the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­ti­on of Germany’s space acti­vi­ties on behalf of the fede­ral govern­ment. DLR is also the umbrel­la orga­ni­sa­ti­on for one of Germany’s lar­gest pro­ject manage­ment agencies.

DLR’s mis­si­on com­pri­ses the explo­ra­ti­on of Earth and the Solar Sys­tem and rese­arch for pro­tec­ting the envi­ron­ment. This includes the deve­lo­p­ment of envi­ron­ment-fri­end­ly tech­no­lo­gies for ener­gy sup­p­ly and future mobi­li­ty, as well as for com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and secu­ri­ty. DLR’s rese­arch port­fo­lio ran­ges from fun­da­men­tal rese­arch to the deve­lo­p­ment of pro­ducts for tomor­row. In this way, DLR con­tri­bu­tes the sci­en­ti­fic and tech­ni­cal exper­ti­se that it has acqui­red to the enhance­ment of Ger­ma­ny as a loca­ti­on for indus­try and tech­no­lo­gy. DLR ope­ra­tes major rese­arch faci­li­ties for its own pro­jects and as a ser­vice for cli­ents and part­ners. It also fos­ters the deve­lo­p­ment of the next gene­ra­ti­on of rese­ar­chers, pro­vi­des expert advi­so­ry ser­vices to govern­ment and is a dri­ving force in the regi­ons whe­re its faci­li­ties are located.

About TU Dresden/ZIH
The TU Dres­den is one of the lar­gest Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ties and one of the lea­ding and most dyna­mic uni­ver­si­ties in Ger­ma­ny. Sin­ce 2012, it has been one of the “Uni­ver­si­ties of Excel­lence”. About 32.400 stu­dents are enrol­led at TU Dres­den. Its data cen­ter, dri­ven by the ZIH, com­bi­nes secu­ri­ty and high avai­la­bi­li­ty with high power den­si­ty and long term fle­xi­ble usa­bi­li­ty. It is cha­rac­te­ri­zed by ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and, thus, cost effi­ci­en­cy. As an aca­de­mic unit of TU Dres­den, the ZIH is the cen­tral pro­vi­der for HPC resour­ces in Sax­o­ny. It pro­vi­des free access to its own HPC sys­tems for mem­bers of uni­ver­si­ties and rese­arch insti­tu­tes from all over Ger­ma­ny. Bes­i­des, it hosts HPC resour­ces for other aca­de­mic part­ners like DLR and MPI institutes.

About NEC Deutsch­land GmbH
NEC Deutsch­land GmbH is a whol­ly owned sub­si­dia­ry of NEC Euro­pe Ltd. and is a lea­ding pro­vi­der of HPC solu­ti­ons, focu­sing on sus­tained per­for­mance for real-life sci­en­ti­fic and engi­nee­ring appli­ca­ti­ons. To achie­ve this goal NEC deli­vers tech­no­lo­gy and pro­fes­sio­nal ser­vices to indus­try and aca­de­mia. Linux-based HPC clus­ters as well as our high-end vec­tor sys­tems meet the dif­fe­rent needs of dif­fe­rent cus­to­mers in the most fle­xi­ble way. Ener­gy-effi­ci­en­cy is one of the key design objec­ti­ves, addres­sed by advan­ced coo­ling tech­no­lo­gies or by the high-band­width vec­tor-archi­tec­tu­re, which deli­vers unpre­ce­den­ted effi­ci­en­cy on real world code. The ser­vice capa­bi­li­ties from the ope­ra­ti­on of com­plex sys­tems to the opti­miza­ti­on of sci­en­ti­fic codes and NEC’s sto­rage-appli­ances com­ple­te our solu­ti­on offering.

About NEC Corporation
NEC Cor­po­ra­ti­on is a lea­der in the inte­gra­ti­on of IT and net­work tech­no­lo­gies that bene­fit busi­nesses and peo­p­le around the world. The NEC Group glo­bal­ly pro­vi­des “Solu­ti­ons for Socie­ty” that pro­mo­te the safe­ty, secu­ri­ty, effi­ci­en­cy and equa­li­ty of socie­ty. Under the company’s cor­po­ra­te mes­sa­ge of “Orchest­ra­ting a brigh­ter world,” NEC aims to help sol­ve a wide ran­ge of chal­len­ging issues and to crea­te new social value for the chan­ging world of tomor­row. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.