Natio­nal Super­com­pu­ting Cent­re (NSCC) Sin­ga­po­re advan­ces R&D across bio­me­di­ci­ne, geno­mics, dise­a­ses, cli­ma­te and more with an 8X fas­ter sys­tem powered by the HPE Cray EX supercomputer

April 27, 2021 10:00 PM Eas­tern Day­light Time

HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se (NYSE: HPE) today announ­ced it has been award­ed $40M SGD to build a new super­com­pu­ter for the Natio­nal Super­com­pu­ting Cent­re (NSCC) Sin­ga­po­re, the natio­nal high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting (HPC) resour­ce cen­ter dedi­ca­ted to sup­port­ing sci­ence and engi­nee­ring com­pu­ting needs for aca­de­mic, rese­arch and indus­try com­mu­ni­ties. The new sys­tem, which will be 8X fas­ter com­pared to NSCC’s exis­ting pool of HPC resour­ces, will expand and aug­ment ongo­ing rese­arch efforts by enab­ling tools such as arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence (AI) and deep machi­ne lear­ning to opti­mi­ze mode­ling, simu­la­ti­on and even soft­ware simu­la­ti­on for quan­tum com­pu­ting. NSCC will use the sys­tem to unlock sci­en­ti­fic dis­co­veries across medi­ci­ne, dise­a­ses, cli­ma­te, engi­nee­ring and more.

The new super­com­pu­ter was fun­ded through a SGD200 mil­li­on invest­ment that was announ­ced by the Sin­ga­po­re govern­ment in March 2019 to boost Singapore’s high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting resources.

Fue­ling a new super­com­pu­ting jour­ney at the Natio­nal Super­com­pu­ting Cent­re Singapore

The NSCC’s new super­com­pu­ter will be built and powered using the HPE Cray EX super­com­pu­ter, which is an HPC sys­tem desi­gned to sup­port next-gene­ra­ti­on super­com­pu­ting, such as Exas­ca­le-class sys­tems, that also fea­tures a full stack of pur­po­se-built tech­no­lo­gies across com­pu­te, soft­ware, sto­rage and net­wor­king to harness insights from vast, com­plex data more quick­ly and effi­ci­ent­ly. The advan­ced per­for­mance will help tack­le com­pu­te and data-inten­si­ve mode­ling and simu­la­ti­on needs requi­ring hig­her speed and tar­ge­ted HPC and arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence capabilities.

The new sys­tem will be housed in a new data cen­ter desi­gned to increase sus­taina­bi­li­ty and redu­ce ener­gy con­sump­ti­on. To fur­ther sup­port NSCC’s mis­si­on for a gree­ner data cen­ter, the new sys­tem will levera­ge liquid-coo­ling capa­bi­li­ties made pos­si­ble through the HPE Cray EX super­com­pu­ter to increase ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and power den­si­ty by trans­fer­ring heat gene­ra­ted by the new super­com­pu­ter with a liquid-coo­led process.

The com­bi­na­ti­on of the­se advan­ced tech­no­lo­gies will enable the NSCC’s exis­ting com­mu­ni­ty of rese­ar­chers and sci­en­tists fur­ther their R&D efforts to make breakth­roughs in a ran­ge of are­as, some of which include:

• Under­stan­ding the spread of air­bor­ne cough dro­p­lets which is cri­ti­cal to addres­sing imme­dia­te risks rela­ted to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Acce­le­ra­ting insights into wea­ther fore­cas­ting and cli­ma­te pat­terns for Sin­ga­po­re and Sou­the­ast Asia with high-reso­lu­ti­on wea­ther mode­ling capabilities
• Advan­cing safe­ty in auto­no­mous dri­ving with opti­mi­zed AI training

“We are inspi­red by how Singapore’s com­mu­ni­ty of sci­en­tists have lever­a­ged high per­for­mance com­pu­ting to impro­ve ongo­ing rese­arch efforts. We are hono­red to con­ti­nue empowe­ring their mis­si­on by buil­ding them a powerful sys­tem using the HPE Cray EX super­com­pu­ter that deli­vers com­pre­hen­si­ve, pur­po­se­ly-engi­nee­red tech­no­lo­gies for deman­ding rese­arch,” said Bill Man­nel, vice pre­si­dent and gene­ral mana­ger, HPE. “The new sys­tem will deli­ver a signi­fi­cant boost to R&D, allo­wing Singapore’s com­mu­ni­ty of sci­en­tists and engi­neers to make grea­ter con­tri­bu­ti­ons that will unlock inno­va­ti­on, eco­no­mic value, and over­all, streng­then the nation’s posi­ti­on in beco­ming more digitally-driven.”

“Super­com­pu­ters have enab­led the sci­en­ti­fic com­mu­ni­ty in Sin­ga­po­re to make signi­fi­cant stri­des in their rese­arch,” said Asso­cia­te Pro­fes­sor Tan Tin Wee, Chief Exe­cu­ti­ve at the Natio­nal Super­com­pu­ting Cent­re (NSCC) Sin­ga­po­re. “The new sys­tem will pro­vi­de the neces­sa­ry resour­ces to meet the gro­wing super­com­pu­ting needs of our rese­ar­chers, and to enable more of such signi­fi­cant sci­en­ti­fic breakth­roughs at the natio­nal and glo­bal level.”

The NSCC’s super­com­pu­ter unlocks new level of sci­en­ti­fic dis­co­very with advan­ced technologies

The HPE Cray EX super­com­pu­ter powe­ring NSCC’s new super­com­pu­ter is a pur­po­se-built sys­tem desi­gned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly to deli­ver peta­flop to exa­flop per­for­mance with the world’s most ener­gy-effi­ci­ent foot­print. It also includes the HPE Cray EX soft­ware stack for soft­ware-defi­ned capa­bi­li­ties that allow the NSCC’s users to gain the high-per­for­mance of a super­com­pu­ter, but through the ope­ra­tio­nal expe­ri­ence of a cloud. Addi­tio­nal­ly, HPE will inte­gra­te the fol­lo­wing next-gene­ra­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies with the HPE Cray EX supercomputer:

• Expan­ded sto­rage to sup­port and share com­plex workloads in mode­ling, simu­la­ti­on and AI using the Cray Clus­terS­tor E1000 sto­rage sys­tem from HPE and HPE Data Manage­ment Frame­work. NSCC’s new super­com­pu­ter will deli­ver 10 peta­bytes of sto­rage with over 300GB/s of read/write per­for­mance speeds.
• Pur­po­se-built HPC net­wor­king using HPE Slingshot to address demands for hig­her speed and con­ges­ti­on con­trol for data-inten­si­ve workloads
• Ful­ly inte­gra­ted soft­ware suite to opti­mi­ze HPC and AI appli­ca­ti­ons using the HPE Cray Pro­gramming Environment
• Powerful com­pu­te to impro­ve mode­ling and simu­la­ti­on using 3^rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors
• Tar­ge­ted acce­le­ra­ted com­pu­ting capa­bi­li­ties with 352 NVIDIA® A100 Ten­sor Core GPUs for both HPC and AI workloads
• Expan­ded net­work infra­struc­tu­re with mul­ti­ple 100Gbps links for upgraded con­nec­ti­vi­ty bet­ween users and the super­com­pu­ting resour­ces using the Sin­gA­REN-Light­wa­ve Inter­net Exch­an­ge (SLIX) from the Sin­ga­po­re Advan­ced Rese­arch and Edu­ca­ti­on Net­work (Sin­gA­REN)

The new sys­tem will be ope­ra­tio­nal in ear­ly 2022. To learn more about NSCC and Singapore’s natio­nal HPC resour­ces, plea­se visit www.nscc.sg

About Hew­lett Packard Enterprise

Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se is the glo­bal edge-to-cloud plat­form as-a-ser­vice com­pa­ny that helps orga­niza­ti­ons acce­le­ra­te out­co­mes by unlo­cking value from all of their data, ever­y­whe­re. Built on deca­des of reim­agi­ning the future and inno­vat­ing to advan­ce the way peo­p­le live and work, HPE deli­vers uni­que, open and intel­li­gent tech­no­lo­gy solu­ti­ons, with a con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across all clouds and edges, to help cus­to­mers deve­lop new busi­ness models, enga­ge in new ways, and increase ope­ra­tio­nal per­for­mance. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit: www.hpe.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, EPYC and com­bi­na­ti­ons the­reof are trade­marks of Advan­ced Micro Devices, Inc.