HP and Intel open Centre of Excellence for High Performance Computing

HP has announced the opening of a Centre of Excellence for High Performance Computing (HPC) in Grenoble, France, in partnership with Intel.
Following a previous HPC benchmarking facility in Grenoble, the HP/Intel Centre of Excellence for HPC enables customers, developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to carry out proofs of concept (PoCs), benchmarks and characterizations to optimize their HPC-related workloads. The HP/Intel Centre of Excellence will feature the very latest processing, networking and storage technologies from both companies, refreshed on a regular basis.

“Current and future generations of supercomputers require huge amounts of compute resources to achieve their expected performance, as well as a balanced mix of advanced technologies, and the expertise to integrate them,” says Philippe Trautmann, EMEA sales director HPC, HP“The new HP/Intel Centre of Excellence for HPC makes available the latest technologies and expertise from both companies and their partners, enabling ISVs and HPC users to ensure that their applications are compatible not only with today’s technologies but also with those in development. The HP/Intel Centre of Excellence demonstrates both companies’ dedication to solving the HPC challenges of our customers and our partners.”

The HP/Intel Centre of Excellence offers a unique environment for joint customers to optimize their HPC solutions. Its dedicated infrastructure and expertise, as well as a broad portfolio of services, can be used on-site or accessed remotely. Clients can:
• conduct PoCs to identify how new technologies can help them create breakthrough differentiation
• carry out application characterization and optimization.
• perform hosting, software integration and optimization on future platforms.

Recognising the need for access to expert advice as well as the latest technologies, HP and Intel have allocated representatives from their existing HPC benchmarking and application development areas to the facility. In addition, the availability of expertise from other partners specializing in parallel computing, high end storage and networking, scheduling and operations tools will enable customers to define new architectures to drive fast, efficient adoption of new technologies.

Currently offered technology platforms include:
• HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers with the latest Intel® Xeon PhiTM co-processors and accelerators to support CPU-, large memory- and accelerator-based HPC applications
• Low-power computing for HP/Intel-based HPC and HTC (high throughput computing) solutions
• HPC software stack using HP Insight Cluster Management Utility (CMU) and Intel development tools suite
• Intel solid state disk (SSD) storage
• Intel Truescale Infiniband interconnect.

“High performance computing continues to enable ever-increasing insight into the most demanding challenges facing science and engineering,” says Dr. Stephen Wheat, Worldwide General Manager for High Performance Computing at Intel. “This is a worldwide challenge that is best addressed with such collaborations as this at the local level. The goal of this collaborative HPC Centre of Excellence is to drive software readiness to keep pace with the advances in industry standard computing and thus enable perennial solutions improvements. Intel is both excited and proud to have HP working in collaboration to maximize the value of our latest products and HPC solutions.”