Atos to boost Dutch research at SURFsara with first Bull sequana supercomputer installed

• 10 times more energy-efficient and 10 times denser than previous system
• Fully complies with customers' sustainability and space-efficiency targets

Exceptional computing capacity for real-time security, personalized medicine, precision agriculture or meteorology

 

Bezons, Salt Lake City, 14 November 2016 - Atos, a global leader in digital services, has installed a Bull sequana supercomputer at SURFsara in the Netherlands to expand the capacity of the national supercomputer Cartesius*. Bull sequana is an open range of supercomputers that is ready to support future exascale technologies - which will make it possible to process a billion billion operations per second. This extension future-proofs the system as Bull sequana can be expanded with the latest technologies, allowing researchers to execute extremely complex research, and SURFsara to fully leverage its investment and save substantial costs. Today the compute capacity of Cartesius has been increased by 18% (to a total of 1.8 Pflops). It will be operational on the 1st of December 2016; the first Bull sequana to be operational worldwide.

Feeding the need for speed while being 10 times more energy-efficient
Taking computing performance to a whole new level, Bull sequana is 10 times more energy-efficient and 10 times denser than previous systems, to fully comply with customers' sustainability and space-efficiency targets.

The supercomputer at SURFsara is used for scientific research by universities, research institutions and to a growing extent, by business. Cartesius is used for climate research, water management, improving medical treatment, sustainable energy research, noise reduction and product and process optimization.

The Dutch national supercomputer Cartesius has been instrumental in achieving outstanding progress in:

• Support brain research, the improvement of solar cells with nanotechnology and the Digital Health Suite, which allows large organizations to collect all kinds of health data through sensors.
• Engineering: to build cleaner engines, the actual combustion chamber must be finely adjusted. For that a lot of models and simulations are used. With Cartesius, a simulation that would have taken three months can be conducted in a few days' time."

Prof. dr. ir. Anwar Osseyran, CEO of SURFsara indicated: "Our society digitizes quickly and thus huge amounts of data become available to researchers. This data has to be analyzed, and more complex models and simulations are necessary. With the new Bull sequana expansion we are able to meet the growing demand for computing power with an on-demand strategy",