AMD today unveiled innovation in heterogeneous high performance computing (HPC) by delivering more than 1.5 petaFLOPS of AMD FirePro S9150 server GPU performance for the Next Generation Sequencing Centre (NGSC) at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw in support of bioinformatics research related to next generation sequencing (NGS) studies. The new ORION cluster features 150 Dell PowerEdge R730 servers with two AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs, for a total GPU peak of 1.52 petaFLOPS single precision and 0.76 petaFLOPS double precision performance. The energy-efficient cluster enables high speed and efficient calculations for genomic data, applicable to a range of genomics and bioinformatics studies, using a fast and power efficient OpenCL implementation for research applications.

"We're committed to building our HPC leadership position in the industry as a foremost provider of computing applications, tools and technologies," said Sean Burke, corporate vice-president and general manager, AMD Professional Graphics. "This installation reaffirms AMD's leading role in HPC with the implementation of the AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs in this 1.5 petaFLOPS supercomputer cluster. AMD and Dell are enabling OpenCL applications for critical science research usage for this cluster. AMD is proud to collaborate with Dell and NGSC to support such important life science and computer science research.""We had excellent cooperation with Dell and AMD to make this project happen in such a short timeframe," said Dr. Krzysztof Ginalski, head of the Next Generation Sequencing Centre and Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw. "The state-of-the-art technology and industry-leading systems management capabilities in the Dell PowerEdge R730 servers along with the AMD FirePro S9150 server graphics deliver an extremely powerful basis for the ORION cluster and provide the compute capabilities we need for our research. The large 16GB of memory of the AMD FirePro S9150 server graphics allows us to run advanced bioinformatics computations on one GPU without inter-GPU communication resulting in very efficient operations. We have chosen a multi-GPU approach with two GPU boards per server to enable cost- and energy-efficient configuration."

"Dell is passionate about the HPC market and committed to powering the revolutionary discoveries being made by top research organizations and enterprise around the world," said Ravi Pendekanti, vice president, product management, Dell Server Solutions. "Together, Dell and AMD have reached a new level with the NGSC project, revealing the true power of the Dell PowerEdge R730 with AMD FirePro S9150 GPUs. There is no doubt that our joint NGSC project delivers top-tier performance for critical HPC applications, while also providing major energy efficiencies."

"We are proud that we had opportunity to build this HPC cluster for NGSC," said Michał Bieńkowski, chief executive officer at Slash sp. z o. o. "Our strong cooperation with Dell and AMD gave us the ability to deliver an effective solution in a very short time. We entered the HPC market several years ago offering high performance solutions in Poland's education field. Our goal is to build fast, reliable and energy-saving data center systems."

NGSC at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, located in Warsaw, Poland, is a research facility for top-of-the-line genomics and bioinformatics studies in biology, medicine, diagnostics and therapy. The ORION cluster was designed and built for storing and processing of huge amount of data generated by the sequencers available in the Centre. NGSC conducts a variety of genomics projects in numerous collaborations by providing NGS technology to academia and industry. Researches from around the world are using this facility to perform NGS (e.g. genomic, metagenomic, transcriptomic, epigenetic) experiments that help them make fascinating research discoveries. Many of bioinformatics studies conducted at NGSC require large computational power, which is delivered by the ORION cluster.