Data Intensive Computing – High Performance Computing

The High Performance Computing and Storage Complex (HRSK-II) and its extension High Performance Computing – Data Analytics (HPC-DA) offers scientists about 60,000 CPU cores and a peak performance of more than 1.5 quadrillion floating point operations per second. The architecture specifically tailored to data-intensive computing, Big Data analytics, and artificial intelligence methods with extensive capabilities for energy measurement and performance monitoring provides ideal conditions to achieve the ambitious research goals of the users and the ZIH.

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At a glance

ZIH @ NHR

Since 2021, high-performance computing (HPC) at German universities has been structured by the NHR network. This network consists of eight NHR centers, which both operate the high-performance computers and offer a coordinated consulting service on the methodological competence of scientific HPC. The ZIH of the TU Dresden is one of these eight national NHR centers. The Free State of Saxony and the federal government provide sustained funding for this.

Detailaufnahme des Hochleistungsrechners mit leuchtenden Dioden

HPC Systems

Our HPC system consists of various computing and storage components, each optimized for different application classes. Thus, we support compute intensive as well as data intensive applications, including parallel simulations, data analytics, and machine learning.

Service-Desk-Mitarbeiterin am Arbeitsplatz

HPC Support

You have questions regarding the access to the HPC systems or regarding the handling of the machines? Do you require additional software or are data transfers jammed? Please contact us.

Access to the HPC Resources

To get to know our HPC systems you have the option to receive a trial allocation. For comprehensive use of our resources, please provide an application including a project description. Our systems can also be used for teaching.

Big Data and AI Expertise

With its service center, the competence center for Big Data and artificial intelligence ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig offers individual consulting in the area of Big Data, data analytics, and artificial intelligence – from the analysis of your scientific questions until implementation on the high-performance computer.

High Performance Computing with HRSK-II and HPC-DA

As competence center for high performance computing ZIH offers special HPC resources as well as individual support and consulting.

The High Performance Computing and Storage Complex (HRSK-II) with about 60,000 CPU cores, designed and operated by ZIH, achieves a peak performance of more than 1.5 TFLOPS (quadrillion floating point operations per second). Massively parallel applications can also leverage the highly efficient processing power of our 448 GPU accelerators. Additionally, the system is equipped with a shared storage consisting of about 2000 high capacity disks and a network of fast solid-state drives (SSDs) for specialized tasks. Therefore it provides the basis to successfully investigate compute-intensive and data-intensive problems of various scientific disciplines, like computational fluid dynamics, weather and climate modeling, material science, electrodynamics, life sciences, and bioinformatics.

With the extension High Performance Computing – Data Analytics (HPC-DA) the system offers modern and powerful hardware also for data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications. It includes 192 NVIDIA V100 hardware accelerators, a system with 48 TB shared memory, and 2 PB flash memory with a total bandwidth of 2 TB per second.

Software environments for various research topics are available on the system.

The national Big Data and AI competence center ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig consults and supports users around the topics artificial intelligence, data analytics, and high performance computing. Primarily for users of ScaDS.AI ZIH operates an additional system with 272 Nvidia A100 GPUs optimized for machine learning applications.

The data center of the Lehmann Center (LZR) of the TU Dresden combines security and high availability with high power density and long term flexible usability. It is characterized by energy efficiency and, thus, cost efficiency. The hot water cooling of HRSK-II saves more than 250,000 euro of annual operating costs only by the elimination of electrical cooling systems. Additional savings derive from the reuse of computer-dissipated heat in the surrounding buildings. The cooling concept was awarded in 2014 the “German Computing Center Prize” in the category “Energy and Resource Efficient Computing Center”.