What’s New: Intel, Atos and the North-German Supercomputing Alliance (HLRN) recently began the second phase of building the HLRN-IV supercomputer system at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) in Berlin. The system, named Lise, consists of 1,180 compute nodes powered by 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 9200 processors. With the help of Lise, researchers and scientists will be able to run compute-intensive projects involving mathematical simulations, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
“Working closely with Atos enabled us to reach a significant technology milestone at HLRN. The long-standing partnership between Intel, Atos and HLRN continues to drive tremendous advancements in scientific research and discovery.”
Why It’s Important: HLRN operates a massively parallel supercomputing system that serves over 200 universities and research institutions in Germany. The Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 processors deliver the computing power HLRN needs to blend traditional simulation techniques with machine learning and artificial intelligence. The Lise supercomputer will allow HLRN to meet the increasing demands of scientists and researchers as they unlock the value of their data and make discoveries in:
- Earth System Sciences – Including climate, oceans, rain forests, glaciers, Antarctic phytoplankton (microalgae), mineral dust cycles and the stratosphere.
- Fluid Dynamics – Including turbulence models for ship turbines, wind turbines and aircraft wings.
- Healthcare – Including computer-aided drug design, improving medical care at home, and a better understanding of illness and treatment of diseases.
How AI in High-Performance Computing Converges: Recognizing that the convergence of machine learning and AI with traditional simulation capabilities will continue to take researchers in many directions, Atos customized and optimized Lise compute nodes using the Intel Server System S9200WK as a foundation, while leveraging the flexibility inherent in Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 processors to support HLRN’s next generation of research.
“By entering into the second phase of our efforts with Atos and Intel, our users will benefit right away from the more powerful system without needing to change their code. The HLRN-IV supercomputer provides true performance portability, which is a crucial aspect for our researchers in order to quickly benefit from the new, more powerful system,” said Professor Alexander Reinefeld of Zuse Institute Berlin.
Intel, Atos and HLRN started work on the HLRN-IV supercomputer in early 2019. In December 2019, the organizations kicked off the second phase of building the HLRN-IV system. In attendance at the event were Professor Dr. Christof Schütte, president of Zuse Institute Berlin; Professor Dr. Wolf-Dieter Lukas, state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Education and Research; Steffen Krach, state secretary at the State Ministry for Science and Research in Berlin; Björn Thümler, minister for Science and Culture in Lower Saxony; Ursula Morgenstern, CEO of Atos Deutschland; and Hannes Schwaderer, managing director of Intel Deutschland GmbH.
The event included lectures from dignitaries within the scientific community, such as Dr. Horst Simon (Berkeley Lab), and details of work being done at HLRN.
More Context: HLRN Case Study and Video | HLRN Web Page
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