Atos/Bull/Eviden Wins $100 Million Deal in India

Eviden, a registered trademark of BULL SAS and a subsidiary of Atos SE, was awarded a $100 million contract with The National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), on behalf of the India Ministry of Earth Sciences, to build 2 new HPCs dedicated to weather modelling and climate research for Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and NCMRWF.

These systems, based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH2000, will have a combined power capacity up to 21.3 petaflops and will rely on Eviden’s patented Direct Liquid Cooling technology to cool the system using warm water.

Located in Noida, the NCMRWF HPC will have an 8.3-petaflop computing capacity for weather and climate modelling, to support advanced numerical weather research across India. This platform will bring together 2,100 CPU nodes with AMD EPYC 7643 processors, 18 GPU nodes using NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, the NVIDIA Quantum IB networking platform, and memory provided by Micron Technology, Inc. NCMRWF HPC will also have 2PB all flash and 20PB disk based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 parallel filesystem storage.

The HPC dedicated to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM, Pune) will provide 13 petaflops of power for atmosphere and climate research. It will integrate 3,000 CPU nodes using AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes through NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. The system will benefit from the NVIDIA Quantum IB networking platform with In-Network Computing, 3PB all flash and 29PB disk based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage and Micron high-technology memory.

As part of the contract, the data centers on both sites will also be upgraded.

Dr. M. Ravichandran, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, said: “Weather and climate research requires massive computing power. This partnership with Atos Group will augment our current capacity to increase resolutions and accuracy of weather forecasts. We look forward to Atos Group in helping us achieve this goal.“

Jean-Philippe Poirault, CEO  big data and Security, Eviden, Atos Group, highlighted: “We are honored to support, through this prestigious contract, IITM and NCMRWF, on behalf of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, in their mission to continuously improve weather modelling and climate research. With a very dynamic growth and a high-quality technological ecosystem, India is a key country for the HPC industry, positioning itself as a frontrunner on the market. The expertise of IITM and NCMRWF combined with the experience of Eviden in delivering the most powerful HPC systems designed for Weather Modelling will provide a unique system ready to tackle the most difficult climate research challenges.“