New Atos BullSequana X supercomputer for IFISC (UIB-CSIC) research on Big Data and Complex Systems

Oct. 30, 2019
 

On Octo­ber 10th, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Balea­ric Islands (UIB) signed a con­tract with Atos for the acqui­si­ti­on of the new super­com­pu­ter of IFISC (Insti­tu­te for Inter­di­sci­pli­na­ry Phy­sics and Com­plex Sys­tems). The new super­com­pu­ting clus­ter will be used for Big Data ana­ly­sis and inten­si­ve nume­ri­cal simulations.

The offer pre­sen­ted by Atos was the best eva­lua­ted among the 11 recei­ved in the public ten­der held at the Euro­pean level for the acqui­si­ti­on of the clus­ter. Among the cha­rac­te­ristics of the new equip­ment, it stands out to be built on Bull Sequa­na X430A5 ser­vers with pro­ces­sors of last gene­ra­ti­on AMD EPYC Rome with Zen‑2 archi­tec­tu­re of 7nm with excel­lent com­pu­ta­tio­nal per­for­mance and unsur­pas­sed com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on band­width (8 memo­ry chan­nels at 3200MHz, 128 chan­nels PCIe4.0). The clus­ter has 960 cores, 12TB of memo­ry and 76TB of sto­rage and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons at 25Gb/s bet­ween the ser­vers and with over­all per­for­man­ces signi­fi­cant­ly supe­ri­or to the other pro­po­sals. Deli­very and instal­la­ti­on is sche­du­led for Decem­ber 2019.

The acqui­si­ti­on of the equip­ment is framed in the infra­struc­tu­re pro­ject EQC2018-004787‑P AEI/FEDER UE of the Spa­nish Plan for Sci­en­ti­fic and Tech­ni­cal Rese­arch and Inno­va­ti­on 2017–2020 and is fun­ded by the Minis­try of Sci­ence Inno­va­ti­on and Uni­ver­si­ties (Spain), the Spa­nish Rese­arch Agen­cy (AEI), the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Balea­ric Islands.

A very sub­stan­ti­al part of the sci­en­ti­fic pro­duc­tion of IFISC is based on inten­si­ve nume­ri­cal simu­la­ti­ons of models appro­pria­te to the descrip­ti­on of various com­plex sys­tems. IFISC has taken advan­ta­ge of the oppor­tu­ni­ties ari­sing from the pro­ces­sing of lar­ge amounts of data (Big Data) from infor­ma­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies and has pla­ced its­elf in a posi­ti­on of lea­der­ship in the ana­ly­sis of the­se sys­tems from a per­spec­ti­ve of com­plex sys­tems. The addi­ti­on of the new super­com­pu­ter clus­ter will sub­stan­ti­al­ly enhan­ce rese­arch capa­bi­li­ty and enable new chal­lenges to be met.


Insti­tu­te for Cross-Disci­pli­na­ry Phy­sics and Com­plex Systems

IFISC is a joint rese­arch insti­tu­te of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Balea­ric Islands and the Spa­nish Natio­nal Rese­arch Coun­cil (CSIC) crea­ted in 2007. Its mis­si­on is the deve­lo­p­ment of stra­te­gic and inter­di­sci­pli­na­ry rese­arch within the frame­work of com­plex sys­tems. Sin­ce 2018, it is accre­di­ted with the Unit of Excel­lence Maria de Maez­tu by the Spa­nish Rese­arch Agen­cy (AEI) as one of the most inno­va­ti­ve cen­tres in sci­en­ti­fic rese­arch in Spain. IFISC is the only cent­re in the Balea­ric Islands with such recognition.

UIB

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Balea­ric Islands (UIB) is a pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ty reco­gni­zed in rese­arch and with a strong inter­na­tio­nal impact. This is reflec­ted in the results achie­ved in dif­fe­rent ran­kings that eva­lua­te the qua­li­ty of rese­arch and tea­ching. This year the UIB has ente­red for the first time in the group of the 500 best uni­ver­si­ties in the world, accor­ding to the Aca­de­mic Ran­king of World Uni­ver­si­ties 2019, bet­ter known as the Shang­hai ranking.

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 socie­ty at lar­ge to live, work and deve­lop sus­tain­ab­ly and con­fi­dent­ly in the infor­ma­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy space.