News Release

New super parallel computer system 'KAGAYAKI' based on Dell at JAIST now in operation

Provides 2.24x higher performance than previous system

Business Announcement

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Figure1.

image: Appearance of the supercomputer system view more 

Credit: JAIST and Dell Technologies

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology ("JAIST"; Nomi City, Ishikawa Prefecture ; President: Minoru Terano) and Dell Technologies Co., Ltd. (Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture ; President: Toshihiko Otsuka ) announced JAIST adopted Dell EMC PE R6525 SCS, a supercomputer system based on "Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525", to their new super parallel computer system "KAGAYAKI," and started its full-scale operation in March 2021.

"Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525 SCS" deployed by JAIST is a cluster-type supercomputer system in which 280 Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525 servers with the latest AMD processors are connected by a high-speed interconnect network InfiniBand HDR. Compared to the previous system the performance of new system improved significantly; the theoretical operation performance increased about 2.24 times to 1.49 PFLOPS, the number of CPU cores increased about 1.8 times to 35,840 cores, and the total memory capacity doubled to about 140 TiB. JAIST will further accelerate world-class research and development in advanced science and technology fields such as nanotechnology and data mining. JAIST will also support container-type virtualization and various HPC/AI research environments to help users build complicated computer environment and support the acceleration of research by the user.

This system features system management by iDRAC (integrated Dell Remote Access Controller). iDRAC is a management processor that comes standard with the Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. iDRAC provides remote system monitoring and management functions, as well as excellent hardware-level security functions that emphasize defense, detection, and recovery, enabling efficient and highly secure system operations.

On the center front of the system cabinet, you can find the characters of the university name "JAIST" in peg solitaire font, and above and below the name, the process of peg solitaire is drawn (a puzzle in which pegs on a board are removed according to certain rules) until the letter "J" is reached. This font was generated by selecting the "character-like shape" solution from the enormous peg solitaire solutions (about one billion patterns are generated from the initial arrangement with the center empty on the 5x7 board) discovered by a JAIST professor with the previous system. JAIST adopted this to the new system because they wanted to pass on the outcomes that were first obtained through the fusion of JAIST's advanced information science and cutting-edge computer resources. The official logos of JAIST and Dell Technologies and the system name "KAGAYAKI" are printed on the side panel.

A key operational feature of JAIST is that students have free access to the high-performance computing environment. Accounts are issued to all the students immediately upon their admission, enabling them to conduct cutting-edge researches immediately using a sophisticated computer environment without any application to the administration. They can also use the system for joint research activities with other researchers from private companies and other universities without any complicated applications. In addition to its critical role as knowledge center, JAIST is expected to play a leading role as an education and research center with such open, state-of-the-art research facilities in the field of advanced science and technology to foster the next generation of HPC/AI human resources.

Minoru Terano, President of JAIST, says, "JAIST has built and centrally managed one of the largest information environments in the world since its founding. JAIST has many faculty members who are active at the forefront of various research fields. JAIST will utilize these information environments for research in various cutting-edge fields such as Information science, AI, developing algorithms, materials and life sciences. JAIST has half of the international students, making the most of the diverse environment. We have been working on the development of human resources.

With the adoption of "Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525" Supercomputer, we expect to accelerate further with research in various scientific fields such as large-scale simulation in nanotechnology and biomechanics, big data processing, analysis of rigid graph structure, promotion of development of new calculation methods and calculation methods for large-scale parallel processing, and human resource development through them.

JAIST's cutting-edge research facilities, including the supercomputer introduced this time, will be the driving force for promoting the development of interdisciplinary research fields, aiming to become the world's top research university, and contributing widely to the region and industry."

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