In Dubna constructed the petaFLOPS supercomputer of rare architecture

In the Laboratory of Information Technologies (LIT) of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna situated near Moscow at the beginning of 2018 the supercomputer with power about 1 of PFLOPS prepares for start. It it was announced at a session of the Academic council of JINR in the House of the international meetings^[1].

The supercomputer is going to be brought into operation on March 26 or 27, 2018 during the meeting of committee of plenipotentiaries, the director of LIT Vladimir Korenkov reports. Mentioned 1 PFLOPS is a planned peak capacity of a system, its actual power will be set during testing.

JINR represents the international intergovernmental research organization. Founders are 18 member states among which in addition to Russia Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova and also Vietnam, the Czech Republic, Cuba, North Korea, Romania, Mongolia, etc. are provided. The organizational structure allows the organization not to publish information on the website of state procurements therefore the cost of the supercomputer project is unknown.

Features of design

The supercomputer consists of two parts. The first part is created from modules which were created by the Russian company RSK based on Intel processors. In modules liquid, but not air cooling is used that allows a system to work more intensively due to more effective heat extraction.

In the supercomputer two models of Intel processors are used — all there are 40 servers on two Intel processors Skylake and 20 servers with Intel Xeon Phi, the scientific secretary of LIT Dmitry Podgayny notes.

If LIT will decide to increase the number of modules, it can be made as the place for add-on modules also is, the engineer of LIT Alexey Vorontsov notes. For the supercomputer RSK is engaged in installation of infrastructure.

The second part of the supercomputer consists of the graphic processors Nvidia Volta. According to Korenkov, using this part of a system the problems connected with artificial intelligence and machine learning will be solved.

Advantages of heterogeneity

According to Podgayny, the uniqueness of the new supercomputer is that it is a heterogeneous system while in the world it is mainly used homogeneous, i.e. consisting only of central processors (without accelerators), or from processors with accelerators, but one type. At the same time in the supercomputer of JINR graphic accelerators and processors of two types are used. "It is no more than 4-5 pieces of such systems in the world" — Podgayny is sure.

At the same time he specified that in this aspect the new supercomputer acts as the lineal heir of a heterogeneous cluster for parallel computings of HybriLIT which is a part of the Multifunction information complex of JINR since February, 2015.

Scope of application

The supercomputer will be used first of all by physicists-theorists who work in JINR. At the moment they are forced to use if necessary computing powers of supercomputers far off. Existence of a "house" system available 24/7, will solve this problem, Podgayny notes.

The supercomputer will be used by the staff of JINR for solving of tasks on quantum chromodynamics on a grid. On it the experiments and processes happening on a collider of protons and heavy ions of NICA for reconstruction in vitro of a special status of substance in which our Universe during the first moments after the Big Bang stayed will be modelled. Creation of a collider began in Laboratory of high energy physics of JINR in 2013. Actually, NICA also became one of the reasons for which the management of institute made the decision on purchase of the supercomputer. Construction of a collider is going to finish in 2020. Scientists from other institutes with which JINR cooperates will also be able to use the supercomputer.

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