Preparing Olivia to serve Norwegian scientists effectively from day one

30.10.2024

Early access to NVIDIA GH200 nodes

The Preparations for Operation Working Group (POWG) is making significant strides to ensure that the Olivia supercomputer is ready for seamless research use by the autumn of next year.

Close up of a modern GPU.

With early remote access to NVIDIA GH200 nodes, the team has gained a powerful advantage as they test, fine-tune, and set up essential resources for this cutting-edge infrastructure.

This early access enables POWG members to familiarise themselves with Olivia's advanced systems and make crucial adjustments in compilers and performance metrics—tasks that are key to providing a smooth and efficient experience for scientists across Norway. Each step is part of a meticulous preparation process to the groundwork to ensure Olivia will be fully optimised for high-performance computing needs from the moment it goes live.

-Starting early gives us a head start in preparing for the upcoming milestones, ensuring that we are ready to hit the ground running, says Steinar Brattøy Gundersen, HPC Adviser in Sigma2 who leads the POWG.

Initial testing on GH200 with Bifrost software shows up to 2x speedup compared to jobs running on Betzy. We are excited to see what results we might see with further testing and other software applications.

With this strategic access to NVIDIA GH200 nodes, POWG is working tirelessly to deliver a robust and dependable platform to support cutting-edge research, bringing Norwegian researchers one step closer to groundbreaking discoveries.

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Graph showing initial performance of Bifrost on GH200.
Early performance testing shows impressive results for the Bifrost code. The graph indicates the performance of Bifrost in Mz/s for 3 different grid sizes run on Betzy and the new Grace processor.

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