Lenovo Demonstrates Collaborative Innovation at ISC 2016

FRANKFURT, Germany – June 20, 2016 – Lenovo (HKSE: 992) today unveiled a new technical framework for integrating its advanced server and storage portfolio with technologies from industry-leading partners to create powerful High-Performance Computing (HPC) solutions. The company also demonstrated the ability to create cooling capacity by recycling captured hot water, which represents a significant breakthrough in water cooling technology.  It achieved this advancement in collaboration with customer Leibniz Supercomputer Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (LRZ).

HPC Solutions Framework

The comprehensive framework called Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure Services provides a clear, replicable blueprint for solution development, configuration, build, delivery and support. It was disclosed here at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC). For this framework, Lenovo is partnering with Intel®, leveraging Intel® Scalable System Framework (SFF) to deliver fully integrated HPC solutions with unified support.

Lenovo showcased the first deployment using this framework – the “MARCONI” Supercomputer for Cineca, an inter-university computing consortium based in Casalecchio di Reno (Bologna), Italy.  The supercomputer, co-designed by Cineca and Lenovo, is based on the Lenovo NeXtScale platform using the latest Intel® Xeon® processors.  It is one of the biggest Intel® Omni-Path Architecture deployments to date.  It gives the scientific community access to a technologically advanced, energy-efficient HPC solution.

Lenovo achieved a sustained High-Performance Linpack (HPL) performance of 1.72 PFlop/s on MARCONI, underlining the company’s capability to deliver and rapidly deploy the newest, leading-edge HPC technologies.  The deployment speed can be accelerated because the solution comes fully assembled, tested and ready to run.

Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure Services leverages the company’s powerful server portfolio, upgraded earlier this year with next-generation Intel® Xeon® v4 processors and the introduction of a new dense, 2U, 4-node system, the ThinkServer SD350.  In addition, Lenovo upgraded its industry leading direct-water cooled NeXtScale M5 solution to integrate Intel® Xeon® v4 processors with an improved custom loop that enables even greater performance, efficiency and flexibility. Lenovo will demonstrate how the new direct-water cooled NeXtScale M5 solution can capture up to 90% of its heat directly into the water at its booth during ISC.

Innovating with Customers

At ISC 2016, Lenovo and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre highlighted their recent breakthrough of cooling the Lenovo NeXtScale M5 based CooLMUC-2 cluster with 50°C hot water in a production environment.  LRZ uses this system to move “green IT” a step further, taking the hot water from Lenovo’s direct water cooling technology to drive “absorption chillers.”  These chillers use the energy in the hot water to generate cold water, which then is leveraged for cooling five petabytes of HPC storage.

The result is an Energy Reuse Effectiveness (ERE) of 0.3 – meaning that 70% of the captured heat is fully recycled and converted to cold water. In addition, hot water cooling also reduces power consumption of the servers and improves the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).  As a result, the LRZ CooLMUC-2 system consumes less than half of the total electricity of a comparable, conventional air cooled system.

This advancement is the latest milestone in Lenovo’s ongoing effort to work with customers in creating purposeful innovation.  LRZ is a collaboration partner of Lenovo’s HPC Innovation Center in Stuttgart, which is part of a global network for HPC R&D and collaboration that now has other sites in Beijing and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Those attending ISC 2016 this week can learn more by visiting Lenovo at booth #1020.

Quote from Brian Connors, VP, Next Generation IT & Business Development
“A key part of our strategy is to offer open, flexible solutions by collaborating with both customers and partners to drive value in HPC and across the industry,” said Brian Connors, VP, Next Generation IT & Business Development, Data Center Group.  “As the MARCONI supercomputer with Cineca and the advancement in direct water cooling with LRZ demonstrate, these efforts are delivering innovations that bring even more speed, power and reliability to our HPC customers.”

Quote from Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode, Chairman of the Board of Directors of LRZ
“The CooLMUC-2 production system shows an average Energy Reuse Effectiveness (ERE) of 0.3. The Lenovo direct water cooling technology already achieves more than 70% efficiency on heat removal at this very high temperature,” said Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode, Chairman of the Board of Directors of LRZ. “A 100% efficiency would result in an ERE near Zero and thus also provide a nearly 100% recycling of HPC cluster waste heat all year round.”

Quote from Sanzio Bassini, HPC Department Director at Cineca
“Cineca is the largest computing center in Italy and we are deeply committed to delivering high performance computing and engineering research capabilities to our consortium of Italian universities, to the PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) and EUROfusion (European Consortium for the Development of  Fusion Energy).

Recently, Cineca selected Lenovo and Intel as technology partners in a three-year project for the new HPC facility, which will be also a driver for the Exascale class computing system in 2020. The solution has the objective to deliver a flexible and power-efficient architecture able to offer up to 20PFs peak performance to the European research community using the new generation of Intel® Xeon® v4 processors, Intel® Xeon® Phi processors, future Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® Solid State Drives, and the recently announced Intel® Omni-Path Architecture.

The new facility is named “MARCONI” and the first implementation is based on 1500 Lenovo NeXtScale servers using Intel® Xeon® E5-2697v4 processors interconnected by Intel® Omni-Path Architecture. The new system will be announced at ISC16 and will appear on Top500 list. That system will be opened to European research community and offer HPC services starting July 1.

We are pleased to announce our partnership with Lenovo and Intel to deliver a high performance and productive computing facility confirming Cineca as a major actor for HPC initiatives in Europe.”

Quote from Charles Wuischpard, VP Data Center Group, Intel
“Cineca’s selection of Lenovo’s system design, based on the Intel® Scalable System Framework, brings all the benefits of a balanced and modular design to its community of leading Italian researchers and data scientists,” said Charles Wuischpard, Vice President Data Center Group, General Manager of the High Performance Computing Platform Group, Intel. “Intel’s suite of HPC products–including Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® Xeon Phi™ processors, and Intel® Omni-Path Architecture–provides the building blocks for a balanced design that delivers the performance and scalability needed to tackle the extreme challenges of both HPC and big data analytics on a common infrastructure.  Congratulations to Lenovo and CINECA for building the world’s highest performing supercomputer based on Intel Omni-Path Architecture, delivering 1.72PF in the latest Top500 list”.

About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $45 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and data center technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode Yoga brands), workstations, servers, storage, networking, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Moto brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@Lenovo) or visit us at www.lenovo.com.