Chipmaker Intel and HP are jointly develop a new supercomputing system for US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
The new high- performance computing (HPC) system will be used for carrying out research across a number of energy-related initiatives, including renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies, Intel said.
NREL Computational Science director Steve Hammond said the new system will allow the laboratory to increase its computational capabilities while being mindful of energy and water used.
"The new HPC system will dramatically improve our modeling and simulations capabilities used to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies as well as energy system integration," Hammond said.
"At the same time, NREL’s partnership with Intel and HP will demonstrate best-in-class for energy-efficient computing and data center design and will provide a laboratory for collaborative research to address future energy challenges in HPC systems and data centers."
The HPC will be powered by Intel’s current 32nm and future 22nm Xeon processors and the new Intel Xeon Phi co-processors and run on HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen 8) servers.
In addition, Intel and HP have worked closely with data centre designers at NREL to leverage warm water liquid cooling technology to maximise the reuse of heat, the company said.
Intel’s Xeon processors and Xeon Phi co-processors are combined with the new HP warm water cooling application and the data centre design to deliver a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 for the new HPC system.
The total peak performance of the system is expected to exceed 1 Petaflop, the company said.
