- May 16, 2022
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University inaugurates its AION supercomputer
On November 10th, the University of Luxembourg officially inaugurated its AION High Performance Computer (HPC) during a ceremony at Belval Campus. The new supercomputer now provides state-of-the-art support to the University researchers and partners.
The supercomputer will enable research and innovation based
on intensive computing and large-scale data analysis, in particular the fields
computer science, materials physics, bio-medicine and life sciences, cryptology
and artificial intelligence, but also digital history or socio-economic
simulations.
Prof. Jens Kreisel, the University’s Vice-Rector for
research, highlights that the new HPC will be an important element to
implement the University’s ambitious digital strategy. “Excellent research and
teaching need excellent research infrastructures. With AION, the University
reinforces its position as an international frontrunner in HPC, and further
enhances its attractiveness for the most covetable academic staff, experts and
students, and thereby increases Luxembourg’s talent pool.”
High Performance Computing as a strategic priority
“High Performance Computing, High Performance Data Analytics
and Artificial Intelligence are cornerstones of the European, national, and
University strategies”, explains Prof. Pascal Bouvry, Special advisor to the
rector for HPC. “The new generations of supercomputers coupled with the
existing high-level expertise in the field will leverage new discoveries. The
University of Luxembourg takes part in the HPC national competence center in
collaboration with LuxProvide and Luxinnovation, is part of the EuroHPC
network, and established a de-facto solid strategic position in the field.”
At the University, this growing central facility provides
support to deploy the University Digital Strategy and its long-term Strategy
Framework 2020-2039.
The launch of AION also ties in with the recently announced
new European Master in High Performance Computing, which will start in
September 2022 as the first pan-European HPC pilot Master’s programme. The
Master will be managed by the University of Luxembourg.
A powerful instrument
AION is an Atos/Bull supercomputer which consists of 318
compute nodes (featuring the latest generation of AMD processors), totaling
40704 compute cores and 81408 GB RAM, with a peak performance of about 1,70
PetaFLOPS.
“The installation and setup of this powerful machine and its
associated ecosystem was delayed by one year as a consequence of the COVID-19
pandemic,” comments Dr. Sébastien Varrette, HPC Manager at the University.
“The computer’s installation was a long journey, including many testing and
validation phases before we were able to launch it. We are now very proud of
this new tool, which is the most powerful supercomputer the University ever
deployed! This would not have been possible without the tremendous efforts of
the partners involved, including at the University and at Atos, so I would like
to express to them my deep gratitude for this achievement”.
By combining the previously existing supercomputer Iris with
the new AION system, the University's HPC reaches a cumulated computing
capacity of 2.8 PetaFLOPS coupled with a shared storage capacity of 10
PetaBytes.
Communication by Uni.lu