SCIENCE

ClusterVision, specialist in supercompute, storage and database clusters, has announced it has been selected to provide a research consortium led by the University of Bordeaux 1 with a powerful HPC cluster. The cluster comprises 528 Intel Xeon X5675 processors in the energy-efficient Dell PowerEdge C6100 servers. These 3168 cores will provide 38,852 Gflops of processing power for the Aquitaine region of France, ranking it among the current TOP500 supercomputers list. Bright Cluster Manager will be used to deploy, test, monitor and manage the cluster.

The University Bordeaux 1 leads an impressive consortium of universities and research institutes who are investing in this supercomputer to support leading-edge research in science and technology. Included in the group are four national institutes: INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) for computer science; INRA (Institut National de Recherche en Agronomie) for biological research; INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) for medical research; and CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique) to support research in all branches of science. The supercomputer will be installed at the “Université Bordeaux 1 Sciences et Technologies” IT facility in Talence, France.

This project is supported by the Aquitaine Regional Government with financial backing from the European Union and the European Regional Development Fund.

“This new supercomputer will bring scientists and engineers in the region unprecedented access to supercomputing resources,” said Jacques Bernard, Supercomputing Manager for MCIA – Mésocentre de Calcul Intensif Aquitain. “Currently, researchers in the Aquitaine region must compete for time at other large national or European centers such as IDRIS, CINES or CCRT. They will soon be able to research faster and better serve the needs of industry in our region.”

ClusterVision tapped a number of technology partners to meet the needs of the consortium: Dell with Intel's processor technology for servers, QLogic for the high-speed infiniband QDR, Fraunhofer’s FhGFS for the 120 TB parallel file system, Bright Computing for the cluster management solution and Rittal for the racks and cooling system. ClusterVision and Dell federated technology providers Intel, NVIDIA and QLogic in a partnership program aiming at providing the University Bordeaux 1 consortium with next-generation technologies. Experimenting and showcasing processor, network and other HPC related technologies in their early stage will enable the consortium to increase its exposure at regional and national levels, thereby demonstrating the expertise of the research consortium by benefiting from the support of HPC industry leaders.

“As you would expect, the evaluation process for this project was intense,” said Pierre Gay, the lead systems administrator in charge of the project. “In the end, we chose the solution from ClusterVision for several key reasons: strong benchmark results, impressive compute power, a flexible user portal and a powerful cluster management solution. Just as importantly, ClusterVision has revealed itself to be a trusted partner for us through successful projects accomplished in the past.”