MODERN HPC cluster supports landscape research at the ZALF

Since April this year, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) is pleased about the energy efficient HPC Cluster with 125 compute nodes equipped with latest Intel® Xeon® Scalable 6230 processor technology. The planning for the € 1.78 million project started in 2017. The entire new construction of the data center, including conception and implementation was realized by MEGWARE.

„Thanks to the professional advice and support provided by MEGWARE, ZALF has now access to a powerful HPC cluster system, which makes new modeling methods and simulation techniques for complex agricultural landscape research available.“
^{(Dr. Ralf Wieland | Head of AG Simulation Methods | Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF))}

The first "Cascade Lake" cluster delivered by MEGWARE includes over 5000 cores, 14.4 TB of local DDR4 memory, and a fast Intel® Omni-Path 100Gbit / s MPI communication network. The cooling of the three racks is realized by air/water heat exchangers. The additional MEGWARE GPU nodes allow ZALF to use state-of-the-art machine learning technologies that promise new insights in landscape research. With the help of the new computing power, theoretical knowledge about complex landscape processes will be more efficiently translated into recommendations for action for the sustainable use of agricultural landscapes.