Lenovo ThinkSystem Technology Boosts Performance of Canadian Niagara HPC

• Canada’s most-powerful research supercomputer, Niagara, is available to researchers of all disciplines across the country, enabling large-scale computation of big data required for artificial intelligence, climate change research, modelling, astrophysics and more
• End-to-end Lenovo system of 1,500 dense ThinkSystem SD530 compute nodes, high-speed IB networking and DSS-G storage delivers more than three petaflops of processing power and 12PB of storage
• Aligned with Lenovo strategy to solve humanity’s challenges with supercomputing solutions

Lenovo Data Center Group in collaboration with SciNet, University of Toronto, Compute Ontario and Compute Canada, unveiled the addition of 1,500 dense Lenovo ThinkSystem SD530 compute nodes for Niagara – Canada’s most-powerful research supercomputer.

As the demand for HPC in quantitative research increases rapidly, this latest expansion of compute power will help Canadian researchers achieve meaningful results in AI, astrophysics, climate change, oceanic research and other disciplines using big data.

Building on Niagara’s position as Canada’s fastest single cluster, each of ThinkSystem SD530 compute node is equipped with two Intel scalable systems processors with 20 processing cores per processor – amassing 60,000 cores. With the addition of ThinkSystem SD530 compute nodes, Niagara will provide more than three petaflops of processing power to conduct simultaneous big data computations, simulations and modelling.

“It is our goal to help the world’s premier research teams and institutions leverage HPC to solve humanity’s greatest challenges,” said Scott Tease, executive director of HPC and AI, Lenovo data center group. “Our close partnership with University of Toronto, Compute Ontario and Compute Canada to advance Niagara as Canada’s most powerful research computing platform is a great example of collaborative innovation we can achieve in fulfilling that goal.“

This system is supported by more than 12PB of Lenovo DSS-G storage to handle the immense data sets provided by Canada’s researchers. Tiering storage for performance and categorization, this system will leverage the IBM Spectrum Scale file system. Ensuring computational efficiency, the ThinkSystem nodes leverage intermediate high bandwidth storage which rests between disk drives the processors.

“We support research in diverse fields – from climate science to humanities, astrophysics to life sciences, social sciences to engineering, and physics to chemistry,” said Dr. Daniel Gruner, CTO, SciNet. “We run traditional data processing, simulations, analytics, and increasingly, machine learning as well. The size of the new system, coupled with the ability to easily scale out to the full size of the cluster is crucial for supporting our broad community of scientists.“

Configured specifically to accommodate and accelerate innovation, the Lenovo-powered supercomputer has the ability to deliver an exascale-ready infrastructure with virtually unlimited scalability. The system was deployed as an end-to-end solution, and engineered to achieve energy efficiency for low operational costs.