Eviden deployment to boost DiRAC GPU supercomputing capacity up to 80 per cent

Eviden, the Atos business leading in advanced computing, and the University of Edinburgh today announce a three-year contract extension to increase the computing capacity of the BullSequana XH2000. This energy-efficient supercomputing system was delivered by Atos to facilitate the Extreme Scaling Service of DiRAC, allowing the UK science community to pursue cutting-edge research on a broad range of topics, from simulating the entire evolution of the universe to modelling the fundamental structure of matter.

As part of the contract, Eviden will expand the power of the existing system by providing additional hardware, including 256 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs up to 80 per cent more capacity, allowing scientists across the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) community to drive forward research in theoretical physics.

Additional DDN storage and NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking will be provided with Eviden engineers installing, configuring and integrating the new GPU nodes into the state-of-the-art system, located in Scotland’s capital city.

“We are delighted to continue our strategic partnership with Eviden, an Atos business, which will enable our growing scientific community to harness increasingly powerful supercomputing resources and make potentially ground-breaking discoveries in all the research areas supported by DiRAC. The upgraded equipment will build on the success of the current system, further enhancing our HPC system offering and strengthening the University of Edinburgh’s position as a world-leading supercomputing hub.”: Professor Luigi Del Debbio, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh and Project Lead

“The extension to our existing partnership with the University of Edinburgh is testament to the success of the BullSequana system with these upgrades providing a major boost to DiRAC’s high performance computing resources. Bolstering the existing system with additional GPU capability and storage will accelerate scientific research, helping to address real-world issues through the power of supercomputing.”: Emmanuel Le Roux, Group SVP, Head of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing, Eviden, at Atos Group

Eviden is committed to supporting closer collaboration between academia and industry through the power of supercomputing and deep learning. In the UK, the company works in partnership with centres of excellence including The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre, Wellcome Genome Campus, the University of Oxford’s JADE service, among others.

Eviden, a global leader in HPC, has reinforced its positioning with 43 supercomputers in the latest TOP500 listing (June 2023), all also referenced in the latest Green500. With an increased performance and now reaching 238 petaflops, the Leonardo system, EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputer hosted by Cineca and based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH2000, has maintained its position as the 4th most powerful supercomputer in the world. Eviden also has three new systems entering the listing, including Alex6, first HPC system to enter the TOP500 with an Eviden BXI interconnect technology connecting both CPUs and GPUs.