Stampede 2 Supercomputer at TACC to Sport 18 Petaflops

taccOver at the Dell HPC Community, Jim Ganthier writes that TACC is planning to deploy its 18 Petflop Stampede 2 supercomputer based on Dell servers running Intel Knights Landing processors.

On June 2, we had the pleasure of helping one of our customers and partners, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), celebrate three significant milestones – a $30 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the 15th anniversary of TACC, and the dedication of a new building for advanced computing at their JJ Pickle Research Campus. With the award from NSF, TACC will deploy a new large scale supercomputing system, Stampede 2, as a strategic national resource to provide high-performance computing capabilities for thousands of researchers across the U.S. This Dell HPC System, based on Dell PowerEdge servers, equipped with Intel Xeon Phi processors, pushes the envelope of computational capabilities, enabling breakthroughs never before imagined. It is currently the largest cluster accessible as part of Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).

Ganthier says that the NSF award will enable the new Stampede 2 system to deliver peak performance of up to 18 Petaflops, twice the performance of the current system.

“This funding will take Stampede 2 to the next level by deploying, in phases, a variety of new and future technologies, including new Dell PowerEdge servers supporting the upcoming Intel Xeon Phi Processors, codenamed “Knights Landing,” and future-generation Intel Xeon processors. TACC has already implemented “Knights Landing” processors in its Stampede 1.5 system to drive unprecedented performance results.”

Stampede 2 will be deployed by TACC in conjunction with vendor partners Dell Inc., Intel Corporation, and Seagate Technology, and operated by a team of cyberinfrastructure experts at TACC, UT Austin, Clemson University, Cornell University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Indiana University, and Ohio State University.

NSF is proud to join with the University of Texas at Austin in supporting the nation’s academic researchers in science and engineering with the latest in advanced computing technology and expertise,” said Irene Qualters, NSF Division Director for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. “Stampede 2’s capabilities will complement and significantly expand the diverse portfolio of computing resources increasingly essential to exploration at the frontiers of science and engineering.”

The announcement of Stampede 2 comes at a time when the use of NSF-supported research cyberinfrastructure resources is at an all-time high and continuing to increase across all science and engineering disciplines. Since 2005, the number of active institutions using this research cyberinfrastructure has doubled, the number of principal investigators has tripled, and the number of active users has quintupled. Furthering the Stampede system will help enable a growing number of scientists to have access to computation at-scale.

The original Stampede system has run more than seven million simulation and data analysis jobs for tens of thousands of users around the country and around the world,” noted Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC and principal investigator of the Stampede and Stampede 2 projects. “The kind of large-scale computing and data capabilities systems like Stampede and Stampede 2 provide are crucial for innovation in almost every area of research and development, from providing insights to fundamental theory to applied work that has real near-term impacts on society. Stampede has been used for everything from determining earthquake risks to help set building codes for homes and commercial buildings, to computing the largest mathematical proof ever constructed. We thank the NSF for trusting us again with the tremendous responsibility of supporting our nation’s researchers as they push the boundaries of discovery.”

In related news, TACC will host its KNL Tutorial in Frankfurt at 8:00am – 12:00 noon on Sunday, June 19 in conjunction with ISC 2016

The Dell HPC Community will hold their user group meeting at 8:00am – 10:00am on Monday, June 20 at the Movenpick Hotel in Frankfurt.

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