Northern Intensive Computing Environment

我们建议通过购买和运行一台基于IBM Power9 CPU和Nvidia Volta gpu的新型架构超级计算机，建立一个新的国家级Tier-2 HPC服务（“NICE19”）。在美国政府实验室的SUMMIT和SIERRA超级计算机中，该架构被用于世界500强超级计算机的最新列表中的第一和第二名。目前，这种架构在英国还没有广泛使用，因此通过建立一个全国性的二级设施，我们将为英国的电子基础设施增加显著的多样性和能力。该架构支持GPU和CPU之间的内存一致性以及互连层次结构，以允许有效的分布式GPU使用，扩展可以解决的问题规模，超越其他GPU加速架构，增加加速模拟和分析代码的数据规模，并减少一系列“困难”问题的“科学时间”。这个设施的目的是使许多不同学科的新科学成为可能。我们的主要重点将放在生成需要分析的大型数据集的实验用户（例如cyro-EM设施）和使用机器学习的建模者。通过支持和汇集这两个社区，将有许多新的和令人兴奋的科学机会。这将把HPC带到许多以前没有接触过HPC的社区，从实验和现有数据集中获得更好的价值。此外，为STFC用户DiRAC联盟提供的现有网络基础设施投资将用于将该设施与实验设施和其他Tier-2中心连接起来，以实现站点之间的最佳数据流。该提案由N8计算密集型研究卓越中心（N8- cir）领导，并得到N8合作伙伴关系的支持。这将提供8个FTE的研究软件工程师（rse）来支持这些社区，为这个新平台移植和优化他们的软件，并培训用户，这将是最大限度地发挥这种新型设施效益的必要条件。然后，这些代码将能够在训练有素的用户的支持下在设施上有效地运行。与SUMMIT和SIERRA的架构相似性也将为百亿亿次计算提供一条途径。因此，该提案将产生长期的影响，超出该设施的使用寿命。

We propose to establish a new national Tier-2 HPC service ("NICE19") by purchasing and operating a novel architecture supercomputer, based upon IBM Power9 CPU and Nvidia Volta GPUs. This architecture is used in both #1 and #2 of the most recent list of the Top500 supercomputers in the world, within the USA government lab-based SUMMIT and SIERRA supercomputers. Currently this architecture is not widely available in the UK, so by establishing a national Tier-2 facility we will add significant diversity and capability to the UK e-infrastructure. This architecture supports memory coherence between the GPU and CPU and a hierarchy of interconnects to allow effective distributed GPU use, extending problem sizes that can tackled beyond that of other GPU-accelerated architectures, increasing data sizes for accelerated simulation and analysis codes, and reducing the 'time to science' for a range of 'hard' problems.The purpose of this facility is to enable new science across many different disciplines. Our primary focus will be on experimental users who generate large data sets that need analysis (e.g. cyro-EM facilities) and for modellers who use machine learning. By supporting and bringing together these two communities, there will be many opportunities for new and exciting science. This will bring HPC to many communities who have not engage with HPC before now, with many benefits in getting better value out of experiments and existing datasets. In addition, existing investments in network infrastructure for the DiRAC consortium of STFC users will be leveraged to connect the facility to experimental facilities and other Tier-2 centres for optimal data flows between sites.This proposal is led by the N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8-CIR) and supported by the N8 partnership. This will provide 8 FTE of Research Software Engineers (RSEs) to support these communities, port and optimize their software for this new platform and train users, which will be essential to maximize the benefit of this novel facility. These codes will then be able to run efficiently on the facility, supported by trained users. The architectural similarity with SUMMIT and SIERRA will also provide a route to exascale computing. This proposal will therefore have a long-lasting impact, beyond the lifetime fo this facility.