LUGANO, Switzerland, April 12, 2021 — The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NVIDIA have announced what they says is expected to be the world’s most powerful AI-capable supercomputer. Planned to come online in 2023, the “Alps” system infrastructure will replace CSCS’s existing Piz Daint supercomputer and serve as a general-purpose […]
PRACE Awards Hundreds of Millions More Core Hours to Combat COVID-19
June 17, 2020 by
PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, has issued an additional 10 awards of supercomputing resources, with a total of 227.6 million core hours for the European Union’s effort to combat COVID-19. This follows the first 10 awards recently announced by the organization. Here’s a summary of the latest PRACE awards….
Supercomputing Perovskite Solar Cells
March 9, 2020 by
In this special guest feature, Santina Russo from CSCS writes that scientists are using the “Piz Daint” supercomputer at CSCS to investigate a perovskite material for use in solar cells. “Solar cells made out of certain perovskite materials already exceed 22% efficiency in converting solar light to electrical energy under lab conditions, which is more than commercial silicon cells. However, not all perovskite materials exhibit such favorable properties, and the physics behind their photovoltaic performance is not yet fully known. Understanding these processes is important, since this will facilitate the design of new materials with favorable properties in the future.”
Reducing the risk of blood clots by supercomputing turbulent flow
January 15, 2020 by
People with mechanical heart valves need blood thinners on a daily basis, because they have a higher risk of blood clots and stroke. With the help of the Piz Daint supercomputer, researchers at the University of Bern have identified the root cause of blood turbulence leading to clotting. Design optimization could greatly reduce the risk of clotting and enable these patients to live without life-long medication.
Video: An Update on HPC at CSCS
October 14, 2019 by
Thomas Schulthess from CSCS gave this talk at the HPC User Forum. “CSCS has a strong track record in supporting the processing, analysis and storage of scientific data, and is investing heavily in new tools and computing systems to support data science applications. For more than a decade, CSCS has been involved in the analysis of the many petabytes of data produced by scientific instruments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Supporting scientists in extracting knowledge from structured and unstructured data is a key priority for CSCS.”
CSCS to Host HPC User Forum in October
September 12, 2019 by
CSCS will host the HPC User Forum October 7-8 in Lugano, Switzerland. “It is the first time that CSCS has the pleasure to host the HPC User Forum. The meeting will offer a review of key trends in high-performance computing, with representation of Swiss, European and U.S. perspectives. Special focus will be given to the positioning of Switzerland in the (European) HPC landscape with a presentation by Peter Brönnimann (State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation) and by the Director of CSCS, Thomas Schulthess.”
Registration Opens for HPC User Forums in Switzerland and Scotland
August 12, 2019 by
The HPC User Forum Steering Committee and Hyperion Research invite interested HPC community members to reserve a seat at one or both HPC User Forum meetings that will take place during the same week at CSCS (the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, Lugano) and EPCC/University of Edinburgh in October. The meetings will begin and end at midday, to make same-day travel easier. Registration and food/refreshments are free, but space is strictly limited. Seats will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. We look forward to seeing you in October.
Video: High-Performance Computing with Python – Reducing Bottlenecks
August 11, 2019 by
This course addresses scientists with a working knowledge of NumPy who wish to explore the productivity gains made possible by Python for HPC. “We will show how Python can be used on parallel architectures and how to optimize critical parts of the kernel using various tools. The following topics will be covered: – Interactive parallel programming with IPython – Profiling and optimization – High-performance NumPy – Just-in-time compilation with Numba – Distributed-memory parallel programming with Python and MPI – Bindings to other programming languages and HPC libraries – Interfaces to GPUs.”
Registration Opens for September HPC User Forum at Argonne
July 23, 2019 by
Registration is now open for the HPC User Forum at Argonne National Lab. “Our global steering committee representing leading HPC centers has worked with Hyperion Research to provide a powerful agenda representing key trends at the forefront of government, academic and private sector HPC use around the world. You’ll hear about recent developments in the exascale race, architectures, HPDA-AI, smart cities, cloud computing, industrial-commercial HPC and other important topics.”
MeteoSwiss to Improve Weather Forecasting with Cray CS-Storm Supercomputer
June 26, 2019 by
At ISC 2019, Cray announced that CSCS in Switzerland is adding a third Cray CS-Storm supercomputer to support the development of cutting-edge weather service products at MeteoSwiss. “MeteoSwiss found success with its existing Cray supercomputers and selected this new CS-Storm to provide the additional computational power required to process increasing volumes of weather observations and produce higher fidelity forecasts. The CS-Storm system was also selected for its ability to run numerical weather forecasts within a reduced energy footprint (as compared to competing solutions), and for the reliability the platform provides MeteoSwiss when running critical workloads.”
