Case Study: Technical University of Denmark triples supercomputing power with Huawei and Intel HPC solutions

Huawei Partners with Intel to Build a Supercomputing Cluster for DTU

Technical University of Denmark (DTU) needed to upgrade its Niflheim supercomputing cluster at the CAMD Center to keep pace with increasingly complex materials science, quantum physics, and renewable energy research. The aging system had limited processor performance, memory, and network bandwidth, creating a bottleneck for intensive simulation and analysis work. DTU turned to Huawei, using the FusionServer X6800 Data Center Server and Huawei High-Performance Computing Solutions, to support its next-generation research needs.

Huawei, working with Intel, built a new supercomputing cluster featuring high-density X6800 nodes, Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors, fast memory and SSD caching, and Intel Omni-Path Architecture for low-latency networking. The modular design improved density, management, and maintenance efficiency while reducing energy use by over 10 percent. The upgraded Niflheim cluster went live in December 2016 and boosted performance to 225 TFLOPS, about three times the original system, while also enabling future expansion to 112 nodes without new cabinets.

Technical University of Denmark