Munich, February 9^th, 2023

Atos today announ­ces a con­tract to build and install a new high-per­for­mance com­pu­ter for the Max Planck Socie­ty, a world-lea­ding sci­ence and tech­no­lo­gy rese­arch orga­niza­ti­on. The new sys­tem will be based on Atos’ latest Bull­Se­qua­na XH3000 plat­form, which is powered by AMD EPYC™ CPUs and Instinct™ acce­le­ra­tors. In its final con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, the appli­ca­ti­on per­for­mance will be three times hig­her than the cur­rent “Cobra” sys­tem, which is also based on Atos technologies.

The new super­com­pu­ter, with a total order value of over 20 mil­li­on euros, will be ope­ra­ted by the Max Planck Com­pu­ting and Data Faci­li­ty (MPCDF) in Gar­ching near Munich and will pro­vi­de high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting (HPC) capa­ci­ty for many insti­tu­tes of the Max Planck Socie­ty. Par­ti­cu­lar­ly deman­ding sci­en­ti­fic pro­jects, such as tho­se in astro­phy­sics, life sci­ence rese­arch, mate­ri­als rese­arch, plas­ma phy­sics, and AI will bene­fit from the high-per­for­mance capa­bi­li­ties of the new system.

The sys­tem will run wit­hout fans thanks to its unmat­ched hot water coo­ling (Direct Liquid Coo­ling) and thus have a signi­fi­cant­ly impro­ved ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy. The effi­ci­en­cy gai­ned from this Atos’ coo­ling sys­tem matched with the latest in sili­con archi­tec­tu­re inno­va­tions from AMD, desi­gned with ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy in mind, brings the Power Usa­ge Effec­ti­ve­ness (PUE) value to less than 1.05 (1 being the ide­al ratio), far below the avera­ge of other HPC installations.

The instal­la­ti­on will fea­ture 4^th Gen AMD EPYC pro­ces­sors and for the first time in an Atos-based Euro­pean sys­tem, the upco­ming AMD Instinct MI300A acce­le­ra­tor. The sys­tem will con­sist of ten Bull­Se­qua­na XH3000 racks with a total of 768 pro­ces­sor nodes of and 192 acce­le­ra­tor nodes and will be com­ple­men­ted with an IBM Spec­trumS­ca­le sto­rage solu­ti­on. The CPU nodes will be deli­ver­ed in the third quar­ter of 2023, with full instal­la­ti­on of the GPU nodes expec­ted in the first half of 2024.

Prof. Erwin Lau­re, Direc­tor of the Max Planck Com­pu­ting and Data Faci­li­ty said “The com­pu­ting power requi­red by sci­en­ti­fic rese­arch is ever incre­asing and we see an unab­a­ted need for high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting capa­ci­ty. We want to pro­vi­de the best pos­si­ble sup­port to our rese­ar­chers in their work and have the­r­e­fo­re deci­ded to moder­ni­ze our high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting com­plex. With Atos and AMD, we have the right part­ners for this. The new solu­ti­on will cer­tain­ly meet our demands and once again advan­ce sci­ence in leaps and bounds.”

Emma­nu­el Le Roux, Group SVP, Glo­bal Head of HPC, AI & Quan­tum at Atos, high­ligh­ted, “We are very proud to have been award­ed this con­tract and to have been trus­ted with our exten­si­ve HPC exper­ti­se. We are con­vin­ced that the com­bi­na­ti­on of our new­ly deve­lo­ped, powerful and ener­gy-effi­ci­ent Bull­Se­qua­na XH3000 sys­tem with the high-per­for­mance AMD Instinct MI300A pro­ces­sors will pro­vi­de the Max Planck Socie­ty with a future-pro­of sys­tem and the com­pu­ting power requi­red to fur­ther con­ti­nue its ground-brea­king research.”

Brad McCre­die, cor­po­ra­te vice pre­si­dent, Data Cen­ter Acce­le­ra­ti­on Busi­ness, AMD said “AMD, with the MI300A APU, con­ti­nues to deli­ver breakth­rough per­for­mance for rese­ar­chers and the high per­for­mance com­pu­ting indus­try. AMD is exci­ted by the strong mar­ket vali­da­ti­on of the per­for­mance, power and sim­pli­fied pro­gramming advan­ta­ges unlo­cked by the MI300A APU archi­tec­tu­re and we are loo­king for­ward to working with Atos to advan­ce the spe­ci­fic sci­ence and rese­arch needs of the Max Planck Society.”

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

About Atos

Atos is a glo­bal lea­der in digi­tal trans­for­ma­ti­on with 112,000 employees and annu­al reve­nue of c. € 11 bil­li­on. Euro­pean num­ber one in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, cloud and high per­for­mance com­pu­ting, the Group pro­vi­des tail­o­red end-to-end solu­ti­ons for all indus­tries in 71 count­ries. A pio­neer in decar­bo­niza­ti­on ser­vices and pro­ducts, Atos is com­mit­ted to a secu­re and decar­bo­ni­zed digi­tal for its cli­ents. Atos is a SE (Socie­tas Euro­paea) and lis­ted on Euron­ext Paris.

The pur­po­se of Atos is to help design the future of the infor­ma­ti­on space. Its exper­ti­se and ser­vices sup­port the deve­lo­p­ment of know­ledge, edu­ca­ti­on and rese­arch in a mul­ti­cul­tu­ral approach and con­tri­bu­te to the deve­lo­p­ment of sci­en­ti­fic and tech­no­lo­gi­cal excel­lence. Across the world, the Group enables its cus­to­mers and employees, and mem­bers of socie­ties at lar­ge to live, work and deve­lop sus­tain­ab­ly, in a safe and secu­re infor­ma­ti­on space.

About MPG

The Max Planck Socie­ty is Germany’s most suc­cessful rese­arch orga­niza­ti­on. With 30 Nobel Lau­rea­tes among the ranks of its sci­en­tists, it is on equal foo­ting with the best and most pres­ti­gious rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons world­wi­de. The more than 15,000 publi­ca­ti­ons each year in inter­na­tio­nal­ly renow­ned sci­en­ti­fic jour­nals are pro­of of the out­stan­ding rese­arch work con­duc­ted at Max Planck Insti­tu­tes – and many of tho­se artic­les are among the most-cited publi­ca­ti­ons in the rele­vant field.

Curr­ent­ly the­re are 86 Max Planck Insti­tu­tes and faci­li­ties that con­duct basic rese­arch in the ser­vice of the gene­ral public in the natu­ral sci­en­ces, life sci­en­ces, social sci­en­ces, and the huma­ni­ties. Max Planck Insti­tu­tes focus on rese­arch fields that are par­ti­cu­lar­ly inno­va­ti­ve, or that are espe­ci­al­ly deman­ding in terms of fun­ding or time requi­re­ments. And their rese­arch spec­trum is con­ti­nu­al­ly evol­ving: new insti­tu­tes are estab­lished to find ans­wers to semi­nal, for­ward-loo­king sci­en­ti­fic ques­ti­ons, while others are clo­sed when, for exam­p­le, their rese­arch field has been wide­ly estab­lished at uni­ver­si­ties. This con­ti­nuous rene­wal pre­ser­ves the scope the Max Planck Socie­ty needs to react quick­ly to pio­nee­ring sci­en­ti­fic developments.

The Max Planck Com­pu­ting and Data Faci­li­ty (MPCDF) is a cross-insti­tu­tio­nal com­pe­tence cent­re of the Max Planck Socie­ty to sup­port com­pu­ta­tio­nal and data sci­en­ces. In clo­se col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with domain sci­en­tists from the Max Planck Insti­tu­tes the MPCDF is enga­ged in the deve­lo­p­ment and opti­miza­ti­on of algo­rith­ms and appli­ca­ti­ons for high per­for­mance com­pu­ting and data ana­ly­tics as well as in the design and imple­men­ta­ti­on of solu­ti­ons for data-inten­si­ve pro­jects. The MPCDF ope­ra­tes sta­te-of-the-art super­com­pu­ters, seve­ral mid-ran­ge com­pu­te sys­tems and data repo­si­to­ries for various Max Planck Insti­tu­tes and pro­vi­des an up-to-date infra­struc­tu­re for data manage­ment inclu­ding long-term archi­ve services.