Overview
City has purchased a new high-performance computing (HPC) system in support of the teaching and research activities within the university. The computing system, purchased from Dell™, is a classical Beowulf cluster that ideally can be thought of as a collection of many PCs linked together via a special network featuring an extremely high throughput and very low latency.
In the case of Hyperion, we have put together more than 3000 cores with a total of about 30K GB of RAM (Intel™) memory mapped on a switch and fibre-optics network (Mellanox-Infiniband™). The total investment of about £800K will have a twofold impact on the university.
On one hand, the new computational power will allow City Researchers to tackle problems of a magnitude that could not be reached with the previous, ageing HPC systems. The new computer will also represent an opportunity to encourage academic staff from disciplines that have been so far emarginated in the use of HPC, to explore new horizons of comprehension that can be achieved through big data analysis and machine learning. On the other hand, the new system is an occasion to introduce our students, at all levels, to the use and to the full exploitation of the potential of supercomputing and large-scale data analysis.
This knowledge will certainly enrich their curricula enhancing their possibilities of being employed in leading edge industries and corporations that make a massive use of HPC for their business. We hope to encourage all students and staff - not just those in traditionally HPC-oriented fields - to consider how Hyperion could help in their research and teaching.
N.B. this event is scheduled to take place in person and all timings mentioned refer to UK time. Please take a look at the current guidance for visitors attending in person events at City.
Schedule
18:00 - registration and light refreshments
18:30 - welcome
Raj Rajkumar, Dean of SST (City, University of London)
18:40 - introduction to Hyperion
Alfredo Pinelli, Deputy Head of Engineering and Professor of Fluid Simulation (City, University of London)
18:45 - HPC journey
Chris Marshall, Head of Specialist Services and HPC Service Manager (City, University of London IT)
18:50
Wil Mayers and Cristin Merrit (Alces Flight/Dell)
19:00 - questions
Moderated by Alfredo Pinelli
19:20 - networking, drinks and canape reception
Including the showcasing of HPC content and images from student and staff projects
Organisers
City, University of London IT
School of Science & Technology
Central City Events Team
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