Lenovo Deploys World's Largest Intel-Based Supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Infrastructure supports research aimed at solving the world's biggest problems
Lenovo announced at the International Supercomputing Conference 2017 the delivery and deployment of the world’s largest supercomputer using next-generation Intel technologies at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The supercomputer, called MareNostrum 4, with a processing speed of 11.1 petaFLOPs, will be hosted in “the most beautiful data center in the world,” located in the Torre Girona Chapel of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, and will be used for a wide range of scientific endeavors, from human genome research, bioinformatics and biomechanics, to weather forecasting and atmospheric composition. This new system, which will continue to be developed in the future, ranks 13th on the latest TOP500 list (top500.org) of the world’s most powerful supercomputing systems.
“The rapid delivery, installation and optimization of the MareNostrum 4 system at BSC demonstrates Lenovo’s strength in end-to-end supercomputing systems,” said Kirk Skaugen, president of Lenovo Data Center Group. “Leveraging 25 years of experience with x86 server systems, as well as our leadership in customer satisfaction and reliability, our goal is to become the world’s largest supercomputing company, helping to solve humanity’s most complex challenges through the rapid advancement of technology and innovation.”.
The system is comprised of over 3,400 Lenovo’s next-generation server nodes, powered by Intel® Xeon® processors, interconnected by over 60 kilometers of Intel Omni-Path Technology 100 Gb/s high-speed network cable. This is the third state-of-the-art HPC system Lenovo has deployed within the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). This makes Lenovo the largest supplier of HPC systems to this high-impact scientific community, reinforcing Lenovo’s position as the fastest-growing supercomputer company in Europe.
“From the lab to the factory to the field deployment teams, delivering a system of this size and complexity requires a higher level of integration and skills,” said Madhu Matta, VP & GM of High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Lenovo. “It requires a focus on a holistic customer experience that very few companies are able to deliver.”.
Undisputed global HPC leader
Since joining the Top500 list in 2014, Lenovo has become the fastest-growing TOP500 vendor worldwide. Lenovo ranks 2nd on the list with 92 mentions and ranks first in supercomputing in China, the largest and fastest-growing supercomputing region in the world, where it has 50% more mentions than its next competitor.
Continuing its mission to provide customers with access to new technology, Lenovo is currently upgrading its Global HPC Innovation Center in Stuttgart, Germany, which is comprised of 6,000 cores of the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors and the latest NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), interconnected by a range of high-performance nodes from Mellanox and Intel. The HPC Innovation Center opened in May 2015 to collaborate with customers and facilitate their access to the latest technologies, as well as to experiment with the same systems that power the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer at BSC, before they are delivered at scale. The full system upgrade is scheduled to be completed in August 2017.
An example of a collaborative project supported by the Global HPC Innovation Centre is at the University of Birmingham, which has built a branded research centre called the Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR). BEAR is a collection of IT resources offered free of charge to the university community and accredited external experts, enabling the acceleration of research across a range of disciplines, for example in the life sciences, including genome sequencing, or medical and linguistic research.
“Genome sequencing can help us understand the scale and spread of major epidemics more quickly. When the Zika virus hit the Americas, we were able to respond quickly, transporting mobile sequencing devices to the affected areas and generating DNA sequence data in just a few days,” said Nick Loman, Professor in the Department of Microbial Genome and Bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham. “Comparative genome sequence analysis requires significant computing power and storage capacity. We can instantly access hundreds of CPUs, thousands of GB of RAM and hundreds of TB of storage. This means we can keep up with the rapid generation of data and quickly communicate new findings to the scientific and medical community, contributing to the efforts to stop the spread of an epidemic.”.
Availability
Access to Lenovo's Lenovo HPC Innovation Center is free for all customers with the help of your Lenovo sales representative or partner.
