Cineca "Marconi" supercomputer on the Lenovo NeXtScale platform is available for European research

Installation of the system from Lenovo, based on the architecture of Intel, began in mid-April. Peak performance is 20 petaflops per second.

The placement of a new Italian research supercomputer, which was created with the participation of Cineca and built on the Lenovo NeXtScale platform, began in mid-April. The device is based on the next generation Intel Xeon Phi and Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 processor. These solutions give scientists a technologically advanced, energy efficient and high-performance supercomputer.

The construction agreement was signed on March 30 after the selection, which began more than a year ago - the tender was published in April 2015. The procedure was completed in December 2015, Lenovo, one of the three largest manufacturers of servers on the Intel x86 architecture and the company producing personal computers in the world number one in the world for two consecutive years, received an application for the creation of a computer system.

The agreement reached represents the first step of the Italian infrastructure plan put forward by the leadership of Cineca. The main task is the development of scientific research. The global plan involves raising investments of 50 million euros in two stages. The first, which has just begun, will make available to the scientific community a computer with a capacity of 20 petaflops and a data warehouse with a capacity of more than 20 petabytes. The construction will be completed in the second half of 2017. The second stage will begin in 2019, its task is to increase the power of the computer to 50-60 petaflops until the beginning of 2020.
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“With this plan, Cineca reaffirms its mission to offer a digital infrastructure for computing and big data that will be available for scientific research and technological innovation,” said Emilio Ferrari, president of Cineca.

Supercomputer installation

The new system "MARCONI" will be fully prepared between April 2016 and July 2017. The construction is proceeding in accordance with the plan, which includes the following items:

»The preliminary system will go into production in June. It will be based on the recently announced Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 processor, which is based on Intel x86 architecture and will deliver 2 petaflops power.

" By the end of the year, a new section will be added, equipped with the next generation Intel Xeon Phi processor family (codenamed Knights Landing). The solution is based on a multi-core architecture, the total configuration will consist of approximately 250 thousand cores. It is expected that the power of the computer will increase to 11 petaflops.

“ In the near future, the system will reach its planned capacity of 20 petaflops with the help of next-generation Intel Xeon.

The supercomputer uses the Intel Omni-Path architecture, which provides high-performance interconnection of thousands of system servers for efficient operation.

Lenovo GSS Powerful Storage is a subsystem that includes the IBM Spectrum Scale File System (GPFS). It is connected to the Intel Omni-Path Fabric and provides data storage.

The progressive development of Marconi will allow the use of advanced processor technology, including an extremely productive system with a "green soul". The fact is that one of the parameters set by the Cineca team implies an increase in power up to 50 petaflops without exceeding the power consumption limit of three megawatts at all stages.

“We give researchers the opportunity to study the main scientific and socio-economic tests of our time, covering everything from medicine to climate change, fundamental physics and new materials. Supercomputers and big data are tools for computing and data-based science for national and international research, ”said Sanzio Bassini, head of computing and innovation at Cineca.

“We can only be proud - both as a company and as an Italian team - that Cineca chose us to participate in a huge national and international scientific work, ” said Mirko Poggi, general manager of Lenovo in Italy.

“Participation in such a project is extremely important for Lenovo. It confirms the company's desire to be the leading provider of innovative solutions for data centers, ”added Alessandro de Bartolo, director of data centers at the Italian branch of Lenovo.

“We are ready to take all the necessary steps to ensure the best solutions for computing and performance that will be used in Cineca. We need to make the range of opportunities for the work of scientists as large as possible, ”concluded Marco Briscolini, the head of high performance computing in the group of data centers at Lenovo Italy.

“We are delighted to be able to benefit from the Intel Scalable System Framework in Cineca for leading Italian researchers and data scientists. The optimized shell of HPC products, including Intel Xeon Phi processors and Intel Omni-Path Architecture, provides a balanced solution. This allows us to achieve the highest performance that is needed for computing extreme HPC tasks and analyzing big data in a common infrastructure, ”says Karmin Stragaped, CEO of Intel Italia.

Cineca

Cineca is a consortium of universities based in Casalecchue di Reno (Italy). The non-profit association was founded in 1969 and includes seventy Italian universities, five research institutes and the Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research (MIUR). For more than forty years, Cineca has supported research community research with supercomputers and software for them. The consortium creates management systems for university administrations and MIUR, as well as develops information systems for industry, health care and government structures.