Interview: Piz Daint Supercomputer advances to the #3 position on the TOP500

In this video from PASC17 in Lugano, Michele De Lorenzi from CSCS discussed the recent advancement of Piz Daint supercomputer to the #3 position on the TOP500. After that, he describes the mission of the PASC conference and the location of PASC18 next year.

Radio Free HPC Runs Down the Latest TOP500

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It’s Day 1 here at the ISC 2017 conference, and we’ll be keeping you posted on all the news as the show goes June 18-22 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Cray Collaborates with Microsoft & CSCS to Scale Deep Learning

Today Cray announced the results of a deep learning collaboration with Microsoft CSCS designed to expand the horizons of running deep learning algorithms at scale using the power of Cray supercomputers. “Cray’s proficiency in performance analysis and profiling, combined with the unique architecture of the XC systems, allowed us to bring deep learning problems to our Piz Daint system and scale them in a way that nobody else has,” said Prof. Dr. Thomas C. Schulthess, director of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). “What is most exciting is that our researchers and scientists will now be able to use our existing Cray XC supercomputer to take on a new class of deep learning problems that were previously infeasible.”

New Cray XC50 Delivers 1 Petaflop Per Cabinet

Today Cray announced the launch of the Cray XC50 supercomputer – the company’s fastest supercomputer ever with a peak performance of one petaflop in a single cabinet. “Supercomputing applications are evolving to include more deep learning algorithms, and with this evolution, the uses for GPUs in our systems are increasing, enabling our customers to use new analytics techniques to gain insight from increasingly large and complex data,” said Ryan Waite, Cray senior vice president of products. “The new Cray XC50 system represents a major advancement in our supercomputing capabilities. It provides the highest performance density of any Cray supercomputer, and gives customers the computational resources they need to take on larger, more complex workloads, as well as the next generation of scientific challenges.”

CSCS in Switzerland to Celebrate 25 Years of Supercomputing

Over at CSCS, Simone Ulmer writes that the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre is turning twenty-five. First opened in 1991, CSCS supports users from Swiss and international institutions in their top-flight research and runs computers as a service facility for research associations and MeteoSwiss.

Powering Aircraft CFD with the Piz Daint Supercomputer

The Piz Daint supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) is again assisting researchers in competition for the prestigious Gordon Bell prize. “Researchers led by Peter Vincent from Imperial College London have made this year’s list of finalists for the Gordon Bell prize, with the backing of Piz Daint at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. The prize is awarded annually in November at SC, the world’s largest conference on supercomputing. It honors the success of scientists who are able to achieve very high efficiencies for their research codes running on the fastest supercomputer architectures currently available.”

Creating Balance in HPC on the Piz Daint Supercomputer

The flagship supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), Piz Daint, named after a mountain in the Alps, currently delivers 7.8 petaflops of compute performance, or 7.8 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second. A recently announced upgrade will double its peak performance, thanks to a refresh using the latest Intel Xeon CPUs and 4,500 Nvidia Tesla P100 GPUs.

Supercomputing and the Search for Dark Matter

Over at CSCS, Simone Ulmer writes that Particle physicists using the Piz Daint supercomputer have determined what is known as the scalar quark content of the proton. The research will help efforts to detect and research dark matter.

New NVIDIA Tesla P100 Brings Pascal Architecture to HPC Applications

“Accelerated computing is the only path forward to keep up with researchers’ insatiable demand for HPC and AI supercomputing,” said Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing at NVIDIA. “Deploying CPU-only systems to meet this demand would require large numbers of commodity compute nodes, leading to substantially increased costs without proportional performance gains. Dramatically scaling performance with fewer, more powerful Tesla P100-powered nodes puts more dollars into computing instead of vast infrastructure overhead.”

Supercomputing Hidden Lava Lakes

The Piz Daint supercomputer spotted a large reservoir of magma right below the tiny South Korean island of Ulleung. No harm to humans is expected, but the origin of the magma pool remains unclear.