NEC Supplies LX Supercomputer to RWTH Aachen University in Germany

NEC Supplies LX Supercomputer to RWTH Aachen University in
Germany

TOKYO, Mar
17, 2017 – (JCN Newswire) – NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) today announced that
NEC Deutschland GmbH has delivered a supercomputer utilizing NEC’s scale-out LX
series compute servers featuring the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 product family,
to RWTH Aachen University, one of 11 “Universities of Excellence” in
Germany, offering high performance computing services for engineering and
scientific research.

RWTH is one of Europe’s leading universities, with a specific approach to
connecting engineering and natural sciences. The University optimizes and
accelerates the development process for new products in an integrated approach
that is supported by mathematical modelling and simulation, such as the
application of sciences, including fluid dynamics and material science. The
efficient use of high performance computing capabilities enables the
development of simulation techniques for the flow of materials throughout the entirety
of industry process chains.

The system provided by NEC is built from more than 750 nodes, consisting of
large memory SMP nodes and dual socket MPI compute nodes, with a total of over
19,000 computational cores capable of delivering a performance of more than 600
TeraFlop/s, which makes RWTH one of the top 10 German universities in terms of
HPC resources(1).

The nodes are connected through a high speed Intel Omni-Path network with a
topology that allows continuous expansion of the system, matching continuous
growth of HPC demands from RWTH researchers.

The compute cluster is completed by a 4 PetaByte NEC LXFS-z parallel
file-system capable of 60 GigaByte/s bandwidth. Moreover, a scalable ZFS-based
Lustre solution provides advanced data integrity features paired with a high
density and high reliability design.

In addition, the system not only offers leading edge performance, but it is
environmentally friendly at the same time.　The servers
are entirely cooled with facility water, which reduces the air cooling
requirements for the computer room by 90 percent. The cooling system allows
water inlet temperatures up to 30?C and the cluster can be cooled for free most
of the year through a heat exchanger that does not require external cooling
power.

“We selected the NEC LX technology because of its superior performance, as
well as low total cost of ownership due to innovative cooling technology,”
said Professor Matthias Muller, head of the IT Center at RWTH Aachen
University. “Going forward, we are excited to work with NEC as a strong
corporate partner in expanding our IT research.”

(1) According to RWTH research as of March 17, 2017