Eurora

NVIDIA reported at the beginning of 2013 that the Italian Eurora supercomputer constructed based on graphic NVIDIA Tesla accelerators on architecture of NVIDIA Kepler set a new record on energy efficiency of DPC.

2013

Record on energy efficiency

The Eurora supercomputer from Eurotech company showed stable performance in the 3150th megafLOPS per watt that 26% higher, than at the leader of the latest version of rating of the most energy efficient Green500 supercomputers.

The Eurora supercomputer reached so high rates after installation of 128 high-performance and economic NVIDIA Tesla K20 accelerators in the Eurotech Aurora Tigon supercomputer equipped with the innovation water cooling system of Aurora Hot Water Cooling where electronic and electric components of a HPC-system are cooled with hot water.

Access to the Eurora supercomputer is open for all members of partnership on the advanced calculations in Europe (PRACE) and for large Italian research institutes that it allows scientists to accelerate the researches in a broad spectrum of areas, including materials science, astrophysics, biosciences and physical geography.

"The modern computer simulation helping scientists to make new discoveries and to check the hypotheses needs the highest performance which can cause consumption of a huge number of energy — Sanzio Bassini, the director of HPC-department in Cineca noted. — The Eurora supercomputer equipped with the highly effective Aurora system and NVIDIA accelerators will provide to the European scientists necessary computing resources for studying of all types of the physical and biological systems, without allowing an uncontrolled expense of the electric power and means".

Thanks to GPU NVIDIA Tesla K20 and the Aurora Hot Water Cooling cooling system from Eurotech, the Eurora supercomputer is more economic and more compact than systems with the traditional cooling system. The HPC systems based on hardware architecture of Eurora, including Eurotech Aurora Tigon, allow to reduce energy consumption of DPC to 50%, and total cost of ownership for 30-50%.

Besides, use of Aurora Hot Water Cooling technology reduces or absolutely eliminates need for expensive air conditioning for data center. Heat generated by a system can be directed to heating of buildings, a power supply of refrigeration units for air conditioning or at the same time to power generation, heat and cooling.

"Graphic accelerators in principle are more economic, than CPU, and Tesla K20 accelerators increase this separation even more — Sumit Gupta, the director of solutions of Tesla in NVIDIA emphasized. — The energy efficiency becomes the defining factor at creation of computing systems. Graphic processors allow to develop DPC of any sizes — from small clusters to future exaFLOPS systems — to receive necessary performance at reasonable costs of the electric power".

Eurora is a prototype of the system developed for Cineca within an initiative of PRACE 2IP aimed at creation of stable and qualitative infrastructure according to the highest user requirements European HPC-ssobshchestva. Eurotech offered also the commercial version of the Eurotech Aurora Tigon supercomputer.

the First place in the rating of Green500

The Eurora system is the supercomputer from the largest Italian supercomputer center of CINECA located in Kazalekkyo-di-Reno - the leader of the rating of Green500, the press service of NVIDIA company reported on July 2, 2013.

Graphic NVIDIA Tesla accelerators - a basis of two most energy efficient supercomputers, according to the updated rating of Green500.

The leader of the rating in June, 2013 - Eurora. It is equipped with graphic accelerators of architecture NVIDIA Kepler – the most powerful and effective accelerators from existing: Eurora showed performance in 3210 Mflops per watt that does it by 2.6 times of more energy efficient, than the best system based on Intel of CPU (Météo France). It also considerably bypasses the most effective system based on Intel Xeon Phi - Beacon located at National Institute of Computing Sciences at the University of the State of Tennessee.

The second place in the rating of Green500 in June, 2013 was taken by the Aurora Tigon supercomputer - works for the Italian company Selex ES.

Both systems work at a basis of the advanced high-end servers of Eurotech Aurora equipped with graphic NVIDIA Tesla K20 accelerators.

"Net performance is not an exclusive indicator of value of the supercomputer any more, - Sumit Gupta, the director of computing solutions of Tesla in NVIDIA noted. – Supercomputers of new generations need to combine higher performance at energy consumption reduction. The rating of Green500 shows a possibility of graphic accelerators to provide the excellent level of energy efficient computing power for the systems of new generation".