HPC provider Atos has signed a contract to deliver its latest supercomputer, the ‘Bull Sequana X1000’, to Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany.
The 12-petaflop machine will be Germany’s fastest supercomputer and one the most powerful computers in the world. Among the wide range of applications that will be run on this new systems, the BullSequana will be used in research for the Human Brain Project, which aims to improve the understanding of the human brain through simulation.
‘The scientific community in Germany and Europe requires high-quality, flexible and scalable computing power as well as the matching IT infrastructure. Complex simulation models and unstructured data sets with billions of data points - these are the challenges mastered by the new supercomputing module from Atos’, says Professor Wolfgang Marquardt, chairman of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich.
By selecting Atos as its partner, Forschungszentrum Jülich has become the first institution in the German research landscape to install this new system from Bull, now owned by Atos. The complete system will ultimately include ten BullSequana X1000 cells and is optimised for free cooling all year round, consuming 10 times less energy than previous generations of supercomputers at the centre.
‘The fact that Forschungszentrum Jülich has chosen Atos Bull Sequana supercomputer proves that our European technologies and solutions bring significant value and the necessary trust to more and more research institutes in the demanding challenges they have to tackle. In addition, they appreciate that our Atos BullSequana supercomputer is characterised by high energy efficiency and careful use of resources which provides state-of-the-art low carbon impact, necessary to reach exascale in a sustainable way’, says Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of Atos.
In addition to installing the supercomputer, Atos will be responsible for operations and on-site support, working closely with Munich-based specialised company ParTec, which will ensure system management with its ParaStation software stack and local staff.
‘Since 2010, our experts have been developing the software, which will in future create the union of several modules into a single system. In partnership with Atos it is our goal to provide the leading software for Exascale’, commented Bernhard Frohwitter, CEO of ParTec.
The supercomputer will be operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, a member of the Gauss Center for Supercomputing, and is expected to be installed in Q2 2018.
