Two CYFRONET supercomputers on the TOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world

Athena – the fastest supercomputer in Poland

Athena is currently the flagship system of CYFRONET, which has a theoretical processing power of more than 7.7 PFlops, giving it the 123rd place in the most recent edition of the list and leaving it with the title of the fastest supercomputer in Poland.

The supercomputer provides the Polish academic and economic circles with the most advanced computing resources based on CPU processors and the newest generation of GPGPU accelerators, together with the necessary subsystems to for data storage based on ultra fast flash memory. The configuration of Athena includes servers with AMD EPYC units (6,144 CPU cores in total) and 384 GPGPU NVIDIA A100 cards. An integral part that facilitates the use of such a substantial computing power in an effective way is to provide a high-performance internal network of the supercomputer (Infiniband HDR with a bandwidth of 4 x 200 Gb/s per server) and a high-speed disk subsystem. It is built on the basis of Lustre, an open-source software, which was also used in the disk systems of the Prometheus and Zeus supercomputers, and dedicated disk servers equipped with flash memory in the NVMe standard. The system was integrated with the PLGrid infrastructure.

This type of infrastructure meets the needs of users of CYFRONET supercomputers, who use the available computing power to perform high-performance scientific simulations, including the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods in research in the field of medicine, pharmacology, biology, chemistry, physics, and many other areas of science. Athena's computing power for AI computing is almost 240 PFlops!

Ares – a warrior of science

The Ares supercomputer offers a total computing power of more than 4 PFlops (theoretical efficiency of the CPU is more than 3.5 PFlops and of the GPU – more than 0.5 PFlops). It was built using computing servers with Intel processors (Xeon Platinum model), divided into three groups:

• 532 servers, each equipped with 192 GB RAM
• 256 servers, each equipped with 384 GB RAM
• 9 servers, each with 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 cards.

The supercomputer has 37,824 processing cores. Ares is also supported by a disc system with a total capacity of more than 11 PB. To transfer data, it uses an InfiniBand EDR type of network. On the TOP500 list published in May, Ares was placed at the 362^nd position.

World leaders in energy efficiency

Simultaneously with the announcement of the TOP500 list of supercomputers with the greatest computing power, the Green500 list of supercomputers with the highest energy efficiency is published, calculated as the ratio of floating-point operations per second (supercomputer computing power) and energy consumption: GFlops/W.  It is a huge success for Athena to occupy the 19^th place on the Green500 list of the most energy efficient supercomputers in the world. This place testifies to an excellent ratio of available computing power and energy consumption. Ares also made it to the list, achieving the 101^st place.

Scientific calculations from various fields

Scientists who carry out their research using the CYFRONET infrastructure represent a variety of disciplines. Advanced modelling and numerical computing are used mainly in chemistry, biology, physics, medicine, and materials science, but also in astronomy, geology, and environmental protection. The research topics include dynamic analysis of ceramic composite materials, modelling and optimisation of an energy-efficient prototype vehicle powered by hydrogen, simulation of molecular dynamics of electrolytes for ion batteries, or machine learning techniques to analyse large collections of data accumulated through astrophysical plasma simulations, and many others. The CYFRONET supercomputers are used, among other things, for the needs of high-energy physics (ATLAS, LHCb, ALICE, and CMS projects), astrophysics (CTA, LOFAR), Earth sciences (EPOS), European Spallation Source (ESS), biology (WeNMR), and the humanities and social sciences (CLARIN).

Poland, Europe, and the world

The title of the fastest supercomputer in the world once again went to Frontier, installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the United States. Frontier is the first supercomputer to break the barrier of 1 EFlops (1018), and its theoretical computing power is 1685.65 Pflops (1.69 Eflops).

Once more, the fastest European supercomputer is LUMI, built due to a collaboration of 10 European countries, including Poland. The theoretical computing power of LUMI is 429 PFlops. Polish scientists can access it via the PLGrid infrastructure. The access is coordinated by the Academic Computer Centre. More details on the subject are available here.

Polish supercomputers on the TOP500 list

The most recent TOP500 list included three supercomputers from Poland. The ranking presents itself accordingly:

• 123 – Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET, Athena (7,710 TFlops)
• 186 – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Altair (5,880 TFlops)
• 362 – Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET, Ares (3,510 TFlops).

Use the power of supercomputers in your research

Supercomputers significantly reduce the amount of time necessary to perform calculations to several hours or weeks, which would otherwise take many years (in some real-life cases, it could be more than 150, 700, or even 1,000 years). CYFRONET users have access to professional support – trainings and individual consultations with experts. All details related to the resources of CYFRONET are available at https://www.cyfronet.pl/en/, and the list of services provided by the PLGrid infrastructure can be found in the Application Catalogue (in Polish). Signing up for the PLGrid Portal (portal.plgrid.pl) provides access to a wide range of unique services.