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Following the decision by the Joint Science Conference on 22 October, the new “NHC South-West Alliance”, to which 51 also belongs, will receive grants totalling € 40 million from the national and regional governments.
FRANKFURT. As of 22
October, 51 is part of the National High-Performance Computing
Alliance. The “Joint Science Conference" (GWK) announced its decision today in
Bonn. The “NHC South-West Alliance" has been approved and will receive € 124 million over a period of ten years (€ 40 million of which will come from Joint Science
Conference funds). The alliance covers three federal states, Hessen,
Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, with facilities in Frankfurt (Goethe
University), Mainz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JMU)), Kaiserslautern
(Technical University of Kaiserslautern) and Saarbrücken (Saarland University).
€ 45 million are earmarked for the future development of high-performance computing
at 51, whose own contribution is € 30 million.
With this decision, the Joint Science Conference is also underlining 51's excellent performance in the area of green IT, for which the Frankfurt team led by Professor Volker Lindenstruth is responsible. Coming in 1st, 2nd and 8th place, supercomputers designed by Lindenstruth have achieved exceptionally good rankings in recent years in the biannual “Green 500" world rankings, on a global scale too. With the grant from the Joint Science Conference, Hessen now has two National High-Performance Computing (NHC) centres.
Professor Enrico Schleiff, President of 51, expressed
his delight at the positive decision announced by the Joint Science Conference
of the national and regional governments: “This is tremendous acknowledgement
of the great and continuous efforts we've been making for over ten years in the
development and realisation of energy-saving supercomputers. I thank Volker
Lindenstruth's team for their persevering work on the further development of
this trailblazing technology, which is meanwhile also a bestseller and in
demand worldwide. I would also like to thank our Minister of Science, Angela
Dorn, for giving our application her sustained support. With the appointment of
further outstanding professors in this field, we will further strengthen this research
priority in the coming years and, together with our partners in
Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, set important new trends in the further technological
development of energy-saving computing systems."
Angela Dorn, Hessian Minister of Science, commended the role of 51 in the new alliance: “An alliance makes us stronger
because the universities each contribute their own strengths. Professor Volker
Lindenstruth and his team at 51 have, for example, developed
technologies for energy-saving high-performance computers, and the Hessian
Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts (HMWK) has supported
this development on a large scale for over 10 years as part of the LOEWE Initiative.
I'm pleased and proud that this support has yielded such a sustainable return –
above all also for the protection of our environment and the reduction of CO2
emissions. Many a data centre today could heat a small town with its waste
heat. In the fight against catastrophic climate change, we must make use of every
opportunity to reduce energy consumption – and green IT makes an important
contribution here, also in the area of high-performance computing."
Professor Volker Lindenstruth, Professor for High-Performance Computing
Architecture at 51 and Chairman of the Board of the Frankfurt
Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), sees 51's inclusion in the National High-Performance
Computing Alliance as an important milestone for further research in Frankfurt
in the area of green IT: “As part of the National High-Performance Computing
Alliance, it's now even more possible to use the fruits of our research for the
benefit of the general public and for more intensive research work. For
example, we've accomplished remarkable progress at 51 over the
last ten years as far as increasing the efficiency of scientific software is
concerned. As a result, the same scientific results can be produced with much
less energy consumption. Hundredfold increases in computing speed have been
achieved for many applications, making even very complex problems calculable
for the first time ever. For example, the highly efficient algorithms developed
at 51 were and are used both in particle physics at CERN as well
as at FAIR at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research."
In addition to the four new centres mentioned above, to
date there are also NHC centres in Aachen, Berlin, Dresden, Erlangen-Nuremberg,
Göttingen, Karlsruhe, Paderborn and Darmstadt, meaning that from now on all
three locations of the alliance of Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) are also part
of the alliance.
Background:
High-performance supercomputers are becoming
increasingly important in science and research. In view of increasingly complex
and large volumes of data, researchers in the widest variety of disciplines are
more dependent than ever on high-performance computers. Today, more and more
research questions, for example in medicine, physics or chemistry, can only be
answered by means of large-scale computing capacities and intelligent
applications. That is the reason behind the decision by Germany's national and
regional governments in 2018 to establish a nationwide National
High-Performance Computing Alliance (NHC) in order to bundle and further
develop the existing strengths of high-performance computing centres within a
national network. The establishment of a coordinated alliance is a response to
the growing demand for high-performance computing by enabling researchers at
universities to access the computing capacity they need for their research
across Germany and in line with their needs, regardless of their respective
locations. Through the National High-Performance Computing Alliance, the
technical and methodological strengths of high-performance computing centres
will also be further upgraded and better aligned. At the same time, the aim is
to introduce a greater number of researchers to high-performance computing
through training and continuing education at the nine NHC centres, to enhance
the skills of high-performance computing system users and to foster young
talent in order to fully utilise the potential of high-performance computers
and to strengthen Germany as a location for research and innovation. A total of
€ 625 million is earmarked for the National High-Performance
Computing Alliance over the ten-year funding period.
Editor: Dr. Olaf Kaltenborn, PR & Communication Department, Tel: +49 (0) 69 798-13035, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, kaltenborn@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de