Atos, an international IT services company, together with Fujitsu Spain as the infrastructure provider partner, has been awarded the contract for the supply, installation and operation of the new high-specification supercomputer Teide-HPC (High Performance Computing) ordered by the Institute for Technology and Renewable Energy (ITER) -an organisation that reports to the Inter-island Council of Tenerife-, as part of the INNPLANTA program leaded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The Teide-HPC will be the second most powerful supercomputer installed in Spain, with 2200 processors, 17,600 cores and a peak Rmax performance of 350 TeraFlops.
The new high-specification computing infrastructure seeks to become one of the Information Technology development engines in the Canary Islands and the rest of Spain, by making its capabilities available to projects in the business, education and scientific communities. It is anticipated that the Teide-HPC will be amongst the top one hundred most powerful computers in the world, and one of the objectives is to place it in the TOP 500 Ranking, and the Spanish and European supercomputing networks.
The Teide-HPC is to be located at the D-ALiX Data Centre, the neutral point of access for western Africa and the Canary Islands situated in Granadilla de Abona (Tenerife). An operation plan devised by Atos will take care of the infrastructure’s sustainability and economic profitability. The system chosen is Fujitsu PRIMERGY CX250 S1, with Intel Xeon E5-2670 8c 2.6 Ghz processors. The modular design of the installation means that the Teide-HPC will have a virtually unlimited growth capacity, both in terms of the number of nodes and storage units.
One of the features of the new installation is its environmentally friendly sustainable infrastructure, since the Supercomputer energy consumption will be covered by energy from solar panels and wind turbines installed and managed by the ITER to give service to the complex CPD D-Alix. On its side, Atos has deployed worldwide the program ‘Ambition Carbon Free’, which includes the reduction of energy consumption in the company’s facilities and those of its customers, conducting carbon audits in data centres, and compensation plans for the emissions of the centers.
Where the operation plan is concerned, Atos proposal considers that, from the outset, the main source of income will be the provision of Cloud services in the European Scientific Community network, developed as part of the Helix Nebula programme, the pioneering association between science and large companies in Europe that is defining the path towards the sustainable provision of Cloud Computing, known as the Scientific Cloud.
In order to serve this key market, an expert marketing plan has been devised, based on the development and operation of a Cloud Computing infrastructure that has been especially designed for use in the European Scientific Community, which has growing computing needs. The project anticipates having large educational and scientific institutions as clients of the installation, for whom the outsourcing of infrastructures is more efficient than having their own, as well as companies and institutions that cannot afford their own supercomputing environments, but can cover their ad hoc needs by signing up for these capacities as a service.
Moreover, the Teide-HPC will offer pure supercomputing services for scientific and business environments, participation in European projects through the Atos Research & Innovation group, and local ICT services sold jointly with D-ALiX.
Iván Lozano, Executive Vice President of Atos Iberia, stated: “Our proposal for building and operating the Teide-HPC supercomputer involves becoming a technology partner of the Inter-island Council of Tenerife and the Tenerife and Canary Island societies, rather than being a simple services provider. Along with Fujitsu as the infrastructure provider partner, we are determined that the Teide-HPC shall set out the path to follow as the model for installing and operating this kind of infrastructure. We are extremely happy to have won this important contract, which represents a huge step for Atos in our growth strategy in Spain and in supporting research activities”.
Meanwhile, Jose Manuel Rodríguez Macías, Managing Director of Atos in the Canary Islands, said: “For a Group with a global presence such as Atos, the Canary Islands provide an ideal geographical location, and successes such as the Teide-HPC supercomputer contract strengthen our commitment to the creation of value on the islands. The local nature of Atos Canarias, together with the international dimension of Atos and Fujitsu, make this joint project with the ITER a services platform in three continents which will benefit the entire Canary Island society”.
