HPC guided tour as part of the HRZ Café HPC guided tour as part of the HRZ Café

In the course of increasing digitalisation and research at the University of Bonn Bonn, high-performance computing plays a central role. In order to give university members a deeper insight into the HPC universe at the University of Bonn, the University IT and Data Center offered a presentation of the HPC clusters, including a guided tour of the server room of the latest supercomputer ‘Marvin’, as part of the HRZ Café. Participants took advantage of this exclusive opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of modern high-performance computing at the University of Bonn.

What is HPC and why is it important?

High-Performance Computing (HPC) refers to the use of supercomputers and parallel processing techniques to perform complex calculations in the shortest possible time. In research, HPC enables, for example, the simulation of physical models, the analysis of large amounts of data or the processing of algorithms in the field of machine learning. For the University of Bonn, high-performance computing is an indispensable tool that supports research and innovation at the highest level.

HPC cluster Marvin remains among the TOP500 worldwide

The Marvin supercomputer has been at the heart of high-performance computing at the University of Bonn since autumn 2023. With its impressive computing power, Marvin is still one of the most powerful computers in the world almost a year after its installation (482nd place in the TOP500 list, as of June 2024). The computing capacity of the HPC cluster is required for numerous scientific projects at the University of Bonn. With its 277 computing nodes, the supercomputer is able to carry out countless parallel calculations simultaneously and thus offers researchers at the University of Bonn a powerful platform to realise their data analyses and simulations efficiently and effectively.

Guided tour of the Marvin supercomputer server room

The tour of the server room of the Marvin HPC cluster was conducted by Jan Steiner, a member of the HPC team at the University IT and Data Center. The tour began with a brief introduction to the services offered by the HRZ on the subject of HPC and scientific computing at the University of Bonn. Jan Steiner then took the participants to the server room at the Institute for Numerical Simulation, where Marvin is housed. Here, the architecture of the supercomputer was explained to the participants, mainly employees from the institute's administration, and how the cooling and energy supply of such a system is ensured. The participants were able to gain an insight into the challenges that can arise during the maintenance and operation of such a mainframe computer.

An exciting insight into the topic of HPC and behind the scenes of operations at the University IT and Data Center.