Greek ARIS to enter the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the world

For the first time ever, a Greek infrastructure, computer performance ARIS (Advanced Research Information System), is included in the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the world, based on international benchmarking program Linpack (https://www.top500.org/list/2015/06/?page=5). The national supercomputer began operating in June and will soon be available to all researchers of universities, technological educational institutes and research centers, to implement scientific and technological large-scale applications. The National Research and Technology Network (GRNET) ensures the smooth operation of the infrastructure and user support.

The new super-computing system is based on the IBM NeXtScale platform and Intel? Xeon? E5 v2 processors, of Ivy Bridge technology. Its theoretical computing power reaches 190 TFlops (trillion floating-point operations per second). With 426 computational nodes, it offers a total of over 8500 processing cores (CPU cores) interconnected in FDR Infiniband network, a technology interface that provides very low latency and high bandwidth. The infrastructure is completed by a high performance storage system, of 1 Petabyte (quadrillion bytes), which is based on IBM Elastic Cloud, the evolution of IBM's Parallel File System (General Parallel File System - GPFS). Finally, the system includes software for developing applications such as compilers, scientific libraries and popular scientific applications suites.

In parallel with its operation, the system’s expansion and upgrade within 2015 is also planned, with additional computing nodes and new computing capabilities. The expansion is expected to double the computing power of the system and expand the application field it can serve, making it a powerful tool in the hands of scientists and researchers.

The new infrastructure is incorporated into the European supercomputing ecosystem and enhances the access of Greek users to the Pan-European infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe).

The supply and installation of the system is implemented within the project ?PRACE-GR - Deployment and Operation of the National Supercomputing Infrastructure and related services to the Greek Research and Academic Community", co-financed by the Operational Programme "Attica" Priority "03 - Strengthening Competitiveness Innovation and the Digital Convergence "and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).