UPV Sirius

The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has presented its new supercomputing system, the UPV Sirius, which incorporates the most advanced technologies of this equipment -the same ones included in the Mare Nostrum 5, the most powerful supercomputer in Spain- and which will allow UPV research staff to have a calculation capacity for their scientific studies that quadruples that of the equipment currently used.

Our research staff faces new challenges and increasing competition daily. They need the most advanced technology possible to continue doing excellent science. And UPV Sirius, one of the most powerful systems in Spain, will contribute to this. Its implementation represents a new qualitative leap in our computing capacity and places us at the forefront of Spanish universities," said the rector of the UPV, José E. Capilla.

Among other fields, UPV Sirius will be essential to the development of research projects based on the use of artificial intelligence. "AI is key today, especially in research. This new system will help our research staff to have the computational capacity required by this technology. It will be fundamental for projects and research in areas as diverse as mathematics, chemistry, thermodynamics and with applications in any engineering field," adds José Pedro García Sabater, for Planning, Academic Offering and Digital Transformation.

State-of-the-art graphics cards and an innovative cooling system

Based on the new generation BullSequana XH3000 systems supplied and installed by Atos, UPV Sirius has 33 computing nodes, totalling 3,696 cores, interconnected by a high-speed Infiniband network. It also includes 2 GPU computing nodes that, with 8 of the most advanced graphics cards on the market -the Nvidia H100- can reach a power of 535 TFLOPS for Artificial Intelligence applications.

In addition, among its innovations, an innovative cooling system stands out, making it one of the most efficient systems in the country. "As you increase the computing power, the chips get much hotter, so you need to cool them down and do it efficiently. UPV Sirius incorporates an innovative non-conductive liquid cooling system that acts directly on the chips," explains Jaime Busquets, director of the Systems and Communications Area (ASIC) at UPV.

Among the most efficient systems in the world

Thanks to this cooling equipment, UPV Sirius is currently the supercomputing system with the best PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) coefficient in Spain. The PUE is an indicator of the energy efficiency of a computer, in this case, a supercomputer: it evaluates its performance by calculating the ratio between the total energy it uses and that used by the computer alone.

"We can say that the new UPV Sirius is among the most efficient systems in the world. Undoubtedly, with all its features, it is the new jewel in the crown of computer systems of UPV," says Vicent Botti, professor and director of the Valencian Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN), who has led the scientific project.

For his part, Raúl Payri, professor and researcher at the CMT University Research Institute - Clean Mobility & Thermofluids, highlights the ability of the new equipment to perform tasks that require hundreds or even thousands of cores working in parallel on a specific problem. Meanwhile, Alfred Peris, from the Research Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, emphasises the possibilities the new equipment opens up for the proof of complex mathematical theorems.

The project has also had the support of other relevant researchers from the university community, such as José Capmany, José Duato, Enrique Vidal, Óscar Pastor, Francisco Casacuberta, Mercedes Boronat, Enrique Quintana and José Hernández Orallo.

The launch of UPV Sirius has been made possible thanks to funding from the State Research Agency, co-financed by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU Program of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

New generation

With UPV Sirius at total capacity, the Universitat Politècnica de València is already working on a new project to increase the system by 1,584 additional cores, as well as the total GPU-based computing power by 2,408 TFLOPS, in order to continue to have the necessary equipment for its top-level research work carried out on its campuses.

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