First Cray Shasta HPC in EMEA at UK Research and Innovation

Cray, Inc., a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, announced at a signing ceremony in London that UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have awardedit a £48 million contract award to expand its HPC capabilities with Cray’s next-gen Shasta HPC.

The new ARCHER2 HPC will be the first Shasta system announced in EMEA and the second system worldwide used for academic research. It will be the UK’s most powerful HPC and will be equipped with the Slingshot interconnect, Cray ClusterStor storage, the Cray Shasta software platform, and 2nd gen AMD EPYC processors. The new HPC will be 11X higher performance than its predecessor, ARCHER.

“ARCHER2 will be an important resource for the UK’s research community, providing them with the capability to pursue investigations which are not possible using current resources,” said Lynn Gladden, executive chair, professor at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC). “The new system delivered by Cray will greatly increase the potential for researchers to make discoveries across fields such as physics, chemistry, healthcare and technology development.“

The new Cray Shasta-based ARCHER2 system will replace the existing ARCHER Cray XC30 in 2020 and be an even greater capability resource for academic researchers and industrial users from the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. At rates previously unattainable, the new HPC will achieve 11X higher performance with only a 27% increase in grid power. The ARCHER2 project provides resources for exploration in research disciplines including oil and gas, sustainability and natural resources, mental and physical health, oceanography, atomistic structures, and technology advancement.

“We’re pleased to continue supporting UKRI’s mission and provide the most advanced high-end computing resources for the UK’s science and research endeavors,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO, Cray. “As traditional modeling and simulation applications and workflows converge with AI and analytics, a new exascale era architecture is required.  Shasta will uniquely provide this new capability and ARCHER2 will be the first of its kind in Europe, as its next-gen architecture will provide UK and neighboring scientists and researchers the ability to meet their research requirements across a broad range of disciplines, faster.“

The new Shasta system will be the third Cray HPC delivered to UKRI, with the previous systems being HECToR and ARCHER. ARCHER2 will be supported by 2nd gen AMD EPYC processors.

“AMD is incredibly proud to continue our collaboration with Cray to deliver what will be the most powerful HPC in the UK, helping to process data faster and reduce the time it takes to reach critical scientific conclusions,” said Forrest Norrod, SVP and GM, AMD datacenter and embedded systems group. “Investments in high-performance computing technology are imperative to keep up with today’s increasingly complex problems and explosive data growth. The 2nd gen AMD EPYC processors paired with Cray Shasta will provide a powerful resource for the next gen of research in the UK when ARCHER2 is delivered next year.“