Bibliotheca Alexandrina Egypt Acquired Huawei HPC Solution

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt, one of the oldest libraries in the world, has selected Huawei’s HPC solution to build a massive computing platform.

Huawei HPC solution uses high-density FusionServer servers, and employs high-speed IB for computing networks. The HPC clusters can achieve a theoretical peak speed of 118 TFLOPS while the solution will provide 288TB in storage capacity for concurrent file systems. These features enable Huawei HPC solution to support the applications requiring massive computing.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina is one of the oldest libraries in the world holding a rich collection from ancient manuscripts to modern literary art – a knowledge center in the dissemination of the human intellect. The site is also a place of dialogue, learning, and understanding between cultures and peoples. The building is heralded as a window to Egypt for the world and a window to the world for Egypt.

For the purpose of educational R&D in multiple scientific fields, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina will join hands to build a new HPC cluster with Huawei and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Egypt. The HPC cluster is meant to be deployed for specialized applications that require immense mathematical calculations, such as bioinformatics, data mining, physics simulation, weather forecast, drilling for oil and groundwater, and cloud computing. With a peak performance reaching 118 TFLOPS, a new level of creativity will be inspired and new horizons are arising in the research domain.

The power saving of the high-density X6800 servers, low latency and high bandwidth of the IB computing network, and the other attributes of the devices comprising the Huawei HPC solution won the customer over. The management, computing, storage and other key systems and components all feature a redundant design to help eliminate stoppages from single points of failure. The number of IB and Ethernet switch ports can power cluster nodes up to three times that in the initial configuration, enabling expansion of storage capacity to 4.5PB. HPC solution required one-third fewer cabinets than that of competitors and optimizations to CPU selections delivered 7% better overall system efficiency compared to the next offering. These and other advantages are why Huawei was selected.

Huawei is capable of delivering optimized HPC clusters complete with the infrastructure, hardware, system environments, management utilities, service platforms, and other hardware-software integration to satisfy the specific requirements of the education and research field. With in-house product technology and industry-tailored solutions, Huawei has customized HPC platforms for the University of Warsaw, Newcastle University, Istanbul Technical University, and other education and research institutions. The company has also set up joint innovation centers with strategic partners such as Poznan Supercomputer Center to solidify technical cooperation.