Northern Intensive Computing Environment

我们建议通过购买和运营一台基于IBM Power9 CPU和Nvidia Volta GPU的新型架构超级计算机来建立新的国家第二级高性能计算服务(NICE19)。在美国政府实验室峰会和塞拉超级计算机的最新世界500强名单中，这种体系结构同时被用于#1和#2。目前，这种架构在英国并不广泛使用，因此，通过建立一个国家二级设施，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之间的内存一致性和互连层次结构，以允许有效的分布式GPU使用，扩展可解决的问题大小，超出其他GPU加速架构的处理范围，增加用于加速模拟和分析代码的数据大小，并缩短一系列“难”问题的“科学时间”。该设施的目的是实现跨许多不同学科的新科学。我们的主要重点将是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。通过支持和汇聚这两个社区，将有许多新的和令人兴奋的科学机会。这将把HPC带给许多以前没有接触过HPC的社区，从实验和现有数据集获得更好的价值方面有许多好处。此外，将利用DIRAC STFC用户联盟在网络基础设施方面的现有投资，将该设施连接到实验设施和其他二级中心，以实现站点之间的最佳数据流。这项提议由N8计算密集型研究英才中心(N8-CIR)牵头，并得到N8合作伙伴的支持。这将提供8名研究软件工程师(RSE)来支持这些社区，为这一新平台移植和优化他们的软件，并培训用户，这对于最大限度地发挥这一新设施的好处至关重要。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高效运行。与Summit和Sierra在架构上的相似性也将为亿级计算提供一条途径。因此，这项提议将产生长期的影响，超出该设施的使用期限。

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.