University of Southampton to drive world-leading research with new High Performance Computing system by Hewlett Packard Enterprise

August 29, 2024

Leading UK research university deploys new Iridis 6 system with exponentially higher performance and lower power consumption, to fuel research areas such as cancer treatments, aerodynamic and lithium battery efficiencies

In this article
  • Leading UK research institution chooses HPE ProLiant cluster for Iridis 6, continuing its ongoing investments in high-performance computing
  • Iridis 6 aligns with University’s sustainability strategy, providing 4 times the performance at 70% of the power consumption compared to the system it replaces
  • New system to drive key research projects of national and international scale

SOUTHAMPTON, UK – August 29, 2024 - Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced that it has built a sixth generation high-performance computing cluster, Iridis 6, for the University of Southampton, one of the UK’s leading research institutions. The new system is a vital upgrade and expands existing resources of Iridis 5 to advance research in areas such as genomics, aerodynamics, and renewable batteries. New technology from HPE does this more sustainably and with higher performance than the previous generation.

The University of Southampton is a world-class research-intensive university and a founding member of the Russell Group, which represents 24 of the top UK universities. The university provides some of the largest UK-based HPC resources to public and commercial sectors and offers consultancy and research services to UK businesses. Southampton views high-performance computing as a strategic enabler of its research, driving key projects of international scale, such as the effects of large constellations and satellites in space, and other innovations. Iridis 6 is part of the university’s ongoing, significant investments in high-performance computing, including advancements in power efficiency.

“Investing in state-of-the-art high performance computing infrastructure is crucial to ensure that the UK's prized scientific and research communities have the tools they need to be globally competitive”

Matt Harris
senior vice president and managing director, UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE

"Investing in state-of-the-art high performance computing infrastructure is crucial to ensure that the UK's prized scientific and research communities have the tools they need to be globally competitive," said Matt Harris, senior vice president and managing director, UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE. "The University of Southampton's major investment in Iridis 6 will support the next wave of scientific breakthroughs. We are proud to be helping the University accelerate research and innovation that will contribute to growing the science and technology ecosystem in the UK."

“Throughout the past year, we’ve seen an increased demand for HPC capabilities, with our exceptional community of over 24,000 students and researchers, driven by a growth in AI research cases and numbers of joint projects with local and regional businesses,” said Chris Yorke, Associate Director Research IT, University of Southampton. “At the same time, we are very conscious of the fact that our HPC systems are responsible for a significant part of our energy consumption. To align with our sustainability strategy for Iridis 6, we required a system that would deliver exponentially higher performance at a lower power consumption – and HPE’s expertise in building energy-efficient HPC systems was crucial in achieving this. With the HPE ProLiant servers, we found a solution that provides four times the performance, needing only 70% of the power compared to the system it replaces.” 

“With the HPE ProLiant servers, we found a solution that provides four times the performance, needing only 70% of the power compared to the system it replaces”

Chris Yorke
Associate Director Research IT, University of Southampton

The new system was built using the HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, powered by 4th Generation AMD EPYC™ processors, to provide advanced performance to support computational science at-scale, requiring modelling and simulation. In addition, the University of Southampton leveraged HPE Services to provide dedicated onsite support in building, testing, and deploying Iridis 6 to optimize workloads to efficiently process compute and data-intensive research.

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