Gauss Centre in Germany Awards 2.1 Billion Core Hours for Science

Today the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) in Germany approved 30 large-scale projects as part of their 17th call for large-scale proposals. Combined, these projects received 2.1 billion core hours, marking the highest total ever delivered by the three GCS centres. “GCS awards large-scale allocations to researchers studying earth and climate sciences, chemistry, particle physics, materials science, astrophysics, and scientific engineering, among other research areas of great importance to society.”

Michael Resch Named Chairman of GCS in Germany

Today the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing in Germany announced that Prof. Dr. Michael M. Resch is the new chairman of the GCS Board of Directors. “Over the coming years, GCS is devoted to keeping its leading European position in HPC,” Resch said. “With all the challenges of architectural diversity and varying user requirements, we strongly believe that GCS will face the challenge and deliver performance not just in terms of flops, but more importantly in terms of best solutions and practices for our scientific and industrial users.”

HPC User Forum Returns to Stuttgart Feb 28 – March 1

The IDC HPC User Forum, taking place at the HLRS premises in Stuttgart-Vaihingen on February 28 and March 1, will bring together the HPC community to hear experts from all of Europe and the USA. During the two-day event, one of the subjects will be the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in HPC.

Cray Sets New Supercomputing Record with HLRS and Ansys

ANSYS, HLRS and Cray have pushed the boundaries of supercomputing by achieving a new supercomputing milestone by scaling ANSYS software to 172,032 cores on the Cray XC40 supercomputer, hosted at HLRS, running at 82 percent efficiency. This is nearly a 5x increase over the record set two years ago when Fluent was scaled to 36,000 cores. “This record-setting scaling of ANSYS software on the Cray XC40 supercomputer at HLRS proves that close collaborations with customers and partners can produce exceptional results for running complex simulations,” said Fred Kohout, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Cray.

ExaFLOW Funds CFD Research for Exascale

The ExaFLOW project has announced 3.3 Million Euros of funding for a group of eight organizations to take Europe’s CFD community one step closer to performing simulations in exascale environments.

Speakers Announced for HPC User Forum in Beijing

IDC has announced the featured speakers for the next international HPC User Forum. The event will take place Sept. 22 in Beijing, China.

HPC and SMEs – The Fortissimo Initiative

“Fortissimo will make advanced simulation more easily accessible, particularly to SMEs, through the realization of a “one-stop shop” where hardware, expertise, applications, visualization and tools will be easily available and affordable on a pay-per-use basis. In doing this, it will create and demonstrate a sustainable commercial ecosystem where actors at all levels in the value chain can realize sufficient commercial benefit to enable that ecosystem to persist independently of EU funding and continue to provide affordable services to manufacturing industry, particularly SMEs.”

Video: Europe’s Fastest Supercomputer and the World Around It

Michael Resch from HLRS gave this rousing talk at the HPC User Forum. “HLRS supports national and European researchers from science and industry by providing high-performance computing platforms and technologies, services and support. Supercomputer Hazel Hen, a Cray XC40-system, is at the heart of the HPC system infrastructure of the HLRS. With a peak performance of 7.42 Petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second), Hazel Hen is one of the most powerful HPC systems in the world (position 8 of TOP500, 11/2015) and is the fastest supercomputer in the European Union. The HLRS supercomputer, which was taken into operation in October 2015, is based on the Intel Haswell Processor and the Cray Aries network and is designed for sustained application performance and high scalability.”

Agenda Posted for HPC User Forum in Tucson, April 11-13

IDC has published the agenda for their next HPC User Forum. The event will take place April 11-13 in Tucson, AZ. “Don’t miss the chance to hear top experts on these high-innovation, high-growth areas of the HPC market. At this meeting, you’ll also hear about government initiatives to get ready for future-generation supercomputers, machine learning, and High Performance Data Analytics.”

With Hazel Hen Cray XC40, HRLS Upgrades to 7.42 Petaflops

HLRS in Stuttgart, Germany has upgraded their Hornet system to Hazel Hen, a 7.42 Petaflop Cray XC40 supercomputer. Twice as fast as its predecessor, Hazel Hen is now now ready to support European scientific and industrial users in their pursuit of R&D break-throughs. “In case you’re wondering, HRLS chose the name Hazel Hen because it’s the one animal that eats Hornets.”