AMD is launching Sweden's most powerful national supercomputer

AMD announces a new partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden to deliver a new supercomputer called the Dardel. Powered by the HPE Cray EX supercomputer, Dardel features AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct GPU accelerators, which deliver computing performance of 13.5 PFlops providing a magnificent boost to computing and engineering research in Sweden.

The new supercomputer was named in honor of Swedish author Thore Dardel and her husband, painter Nils Dardel. It will be housed in the Stockholm Center for High-Performance Computing (PDC) and will replace the Swedish national infrastructure for the current leading computing system in the PDC. PDC works closely with developers of leading HPC research applications in major challenging areas - such as computational fluid dynamics, biophysics, and quantum chemistry - to ensure that their applications are tailored to take full advantage of the increased computing power of the new system.

Professor Hans Karlsson, Director of the Swedish National Computing Infrastructure (SNIC), said: “Recently, we have noticed a dramatic increase in the extent to which researchers need to use accelerators (mostly in the form of GPUs). We will soon be able to meet that demand through an accelerated partition in Dardel. "Dardel will significantly increase Sweden's research capacity, which requires access to large computing resources."

Peter Ungaro, Senior Vice President and General Manager, HPC and Mission Critical Solutions at HPE, said: “High-performance computing technologies (HPCs) are widely used in research and development to advance the technologies that go into the products and services we use every day. 

For decades, the PDC Center for High-Performance Computing at the Royal Institute of Technology KTH has empowered the research community to make progress in a range of industries using HPC. We are honored to be selected by the Royal Institute of Technology KTH to deliver the latest HPE Cray EX supercomputer with next-generation AMD technologies and provide an even higher level of performance to enhance and expand their research and drive innovation for Swedish industrial companies. ”

Roger Benson, Senior Director of Commercial Partners. at EMEA, AMD said: “We are thrilled to be working with HPE and KTH on this advanced supercomputer project. The combination of state-of-the-art AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators will enable scientists and research institutions to meet and exceed the growing computational demand of today’s HPC workloads as they advance their research. “

The Dardel system will be installed in two phases. HPE will deliver the first phase of the system consisting of a CPU partition and a data storage system before the flight this year. This initial phase of computers will provide SNIC users with about 65,000 CPU cores to perform their research calculations. The second phase of Dardel, which consists of a GPU partition, will be delivered later this year in the fall. Researchers will start using the first phase of Dardel from July this year, and the second phase from January next year.

Since its founding in 1827, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown into one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key center of intellectual talent and innovation. It is the largest Swedish institution for technical research and learning and a home for students, researchers, and faculties from all over the world dedicated to advancing knowledge.
 
KTH works with industry and society to find sustainable solutions to some of humanity’s greatest challenges: climate change, future energy supply, urbanization, and the quality of life of the rapidly growing elderly population. We address them with the world's leading research and education with great influence in the natural sciences and all branches of technology, as well as in architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history, and philosophy. Almost two-thirds of the 4 billion kroner turnover relates to research.

Source: AMD