A Closer Look at the D.A.V.I.D.E. Supercomputer at CINECA in Italy

D.A.V.I.D.E. represents the third generation of the European Prace Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project to develop a Whole-System Design for Energy Efficient HPC. PRACE initiated the selection process in 2012 to obtain R&D services which should result in future PRACE HPC systems to become more energy efficient. The strict selection process saw several phases, in which three pre-selected European companies were asked to design HPC solutions that would not only be able to outstandingly perform on the most complex algorithms used by scientists and researchers, but would also drastically reduce power consumption. PRACE’s selection process is highly competitive and, during Phase II, the three companies produced early prototypes. All of them were invited to bid for Phase III, during which the pilot for the three promising solutions will be built and deployed at the hosting centres. E4 Computer Engineering stood out since the early steps of the selection and, thanks to the expertise acquired through years of collaboration with leading European research centers, has proposed D.A.V.I.D.E., a solution that was ranked first place for performance capabilities.