Eurotech and the AuroraScience Collaboration have agreed to install an Aurora AU-5600 HPC platform as part of a planned Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Computational Science (LISC), operated jointly by the Bruno Kessler Fundation (FBK) and the University of Trento.
AuroraScience is a research project in the field of computational sciences and computer architecture. 'AuroraScience merges the know-how of many partners. The goal is not only HPC hardware and architecture development, but also exploiting computing power efficiently in a variety of research areas, including lattice gauge theory, computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, protein folding, genomics and medical physics,' said Professor Achim Richter, director of the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*) and representative of FBK for AuroraScience. 'Designing, tuning and porting activities in the petascale age require a global approach, where competence is drawn from different sources.'
'The Aurora HPC architecture offers a very balanced solution that is the result of a very long experience in parallel supercomputing. Aurora builds on the former APE architecture [a supercomputing family originated by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)] and extends it for a broader set of applications, with a potentially large market,' said Giampietro Tecchiolli, VP and CTO of the Eurotech Group.
The AuroraScience project is funded by the Provincia Autonoma di Trento (PAT) and by the INFN. The PAT, through the FBK, provided a significant contribution for the integration of the initiative in a larger framework, where innovation can bridge theoretical and applied science.
The Aurora Au-5600 machine will deliver in its first phase 20 teraflops and will use the latest 32nm Intel Xeon 5600 series processors. Thanks to Aurora liquid cooling, the installation will be also one of the greenest HPC facilities: waste heat will be available to provide heating services to the data centre, drastically reducing running costs and environmental impact.
