TU Dortmund University Launches New High-Performance Computer
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In many areas today, research and knowledge acquisition are reliant on suitable scientific computing infrastructure, known as high-performance computing (HPC). In North Rhine-Westphalia, the resources required for this have so far been provided centrally at 13 sites, among them TU Dortmund University. LiDO4 is the fourth central “Linux HPC Cluster”, for which the Center for Data Science and Simulation (DoDaS) and the IT and Media Center (ITMC) at TU Dortmund University together secured funding. Around 400 researchers working in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at TU Dortmund University use this computing capacity for their research, above all to simulate calculations.
At the official ceremony to mark LiDO4’s launch, Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, said: “Research and science are the feedstock of the future. In the digital age, we need computing power to leverage this feedstock. The State of North Rhine-Westphalia is working consistently to ramp up the centralized provision of computing capacity for our universities, which we urgently need in order to further develop AI and other next-generation technologies. By so doing, we are creating conditions that enable researchers to work quickly with accurate scientific data and swiftly put their findings into practice. LiDO4 is one of many high-performance computers that make our region an even more attractive hub for research and science.”
LiDO4’s computing resources, like those of its three predecessors, are also at the disposal of Fachhochschule Dortmund (University of Applied Sciences and Art. “In addition to the €4.5 million from the DFG’s ‘Major Research Instrumentation’ funding program and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, a further €900,000 has already been invested in upgrading LiDO4,” said Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University. “These upgrades support the Research Centers of the University Alliance Ruhr, where we bundle our top-class international research in collaboration with Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Duisburg-Essen.”
Highly powerful and energy-efficient
“LiDO4 is almost nine times faster than LiDO3, its predecessor,” highlighted Professor Stefan Turek, mathematician and Dean of the Department of Mathematics. It was he who submitted the proposal for LiDO4 together with a team of researchers from the DoDaS and staff from the ITMC. “LiDO4 numbers among the 500 most powerful HPC computers worldwide. It addresses specific needs, especially in STEM research areas, by concentrating on GPU computing nodes. Its open scalable architecture means that it is flexible and can be expanded to fulfil further requirements that might arise from new externally funded projects.”
To ensure the energy-efficient operation of the new computer, TU Dortmund University used its own funds to optimize its building infrastructure prior to its installation. LiDO4 is fitted with a highly efficient hot water cooling system. The water, which has a temperature of around 40 °C, absorbs the heat directly at those points in the computer where it is generated and then dissipates it. The aim in the future is to use the waste heat from the computer to heat the building at Otto-Hahn-Straße 12. LiDO4 was built in collaboration with the company NEC, with HPC hardware from Lenovo and a high-performance storage system from the company DDN DataDirect Networks.
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