German institution, Jacobs University Bremen, runs highly sought after courses on a variety of subjects, including science, engineering and the arts. The university’s academic focus on research sets it apart from other universities. Students and researchers use its facilities to find solutions to prevalent social and technological problems of the 21st century. Various departments have been utilising computer modelling and simulations, as well as data analysis, for years. One of the main infrastructures for this work is the Computational Laboratory for Analysis, Modelling and Visualisation.
Achim Gelessus, Head of CLAMV at Jacobs University Bremen, says: “CLAMV serves as a common support initiative for computer-based research at Jacobs University Bremen and is the platform for exchange and collaboration during computer projects.” Many of the computation tasks require powerful high-performance computing technology. But the older HPC systems that the university were using couldn’t keep up with the increasing importance of computer simulations. As waiting times and delays to research projects grew, so did the need to remove bottlenecks and acquire more capacity.
CLAMV assembled a catalogue of requirements for a new HPC environment to which Dell soon responded with a solution that met every requirement. Dr. Gelessus says: “When we looked at the proposal from Dell it offered excellent computational power and came with a comprehensive range of services.” He adds: “We got exactly what we wanted from Dell – a turnkey solution. We gained a complete HPC design, including hardware and management software.”
The new solution was deployed soon after and the results speak for themselves. Jacobs University Bremen now has the infrastructure it needs to continue innovating and supporting its academic programmes. Researchers have significantly more computing power and have no problems when using applications. “Our new cluster has around 64 teraflops of theoretical processing power compared with our previous solution, which had just 8 teraflops. The HPC solution from Dell is a significant step forward for Jacobs University Bremen when it comes to computer simulations and has become an indispensable tool for many research projects. It means that our Dell HPC infrastructure is recognised by our peers as a first-class environment for research and academic programmes,” says Dr. Gelessus.
The boost in processing performance has led to an increase in research projects the university has been able to win. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kleinekathöfer, Professor of Theoretical Physics, School of Engineering & Science at Jacobs University Bremen says: “We have provided researchers with around a fivefold to eightfold increase in simulation times with our Dell HPC environment, which enables them to win new research projects.” User feedback has also been consistently positive since the infrastructure went live. “Our researchers are much happier with our Dell HPC infrastructure. Not only has computing speed increased to support complex work, but waiting times to use the environment are a lot shorter,” says Dr. Gelessus.
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Madeleine Hudson
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