The University of Queensland (UQ) will mark an important milestone for its technology and research capabilities with the latest upgrade of its Bunya Supercomputer.
Bunya is UQ’s first heterogenous supercomputer and represents its peak capability in High Performance Computing Infrastructure. It is also one of the most powerful supercomputers in the Group of Eight (GO8) Universities.
“The Bunya supercomputer and its evergreen refresh cycle represents a peak capability and enabler for scientific research at UQ," UQ’s Research Computing Centre Director Jake Carroll said.
"The strategic investments UQ is making here will benefit us long term in competitiveness, time to discovery and breakthroughs for a whole new generation of research,“
The latest upgrade, Phase 3.0, will deliver around 2,000 extra cutting-edge AMD Genoa CPU cores, a significant fleet of the latest NVlink connected, liquid-cooled Nvidia H100 GPUs for massive AI and ML workloads, a new set of the Nvidia L40S for best-in-class FP32 performance, and an extensive array of the new Nvidia visualisation GPU – the A16.
The update was preceded by:
- Phase 1.0: delivered the first 6,000 CPU cores
- Phase 2.0: delivered another 6,000 CPU cores, the first tranche of the Nvidia H100 AI accelerator GPUs in Australia, and a suite of visualisation and accessibility focused GPU Technologies (the Nvidia L40), allowing the RCC to launch “onBunya” – the OnDemand interactive supercomputing desktop for all researchers.
Bunya is consistently refreshed and upgraded every year to bring new and cutting-edge technologies to UQ’s research community. This dedicated focus accelerates time to discovery, gives UQ agility in technology leadership, and provides a broad economy of scale.
Bunya, procured from Dell Technologies and named after the native South-East Queensland tree, uses novel methods of software deployment and management to allow for flexibility and ease of operation for researchers.
“The mixture of technologies in Bunya allows us to provide supercomputing capabilities to a broader range of researchers than ever before,” Jake said. “With eResearch and Digital Research Infrastructure being a part of almost every research career, we need approachable and flexible high performance computing facilities to enable all our researchers.
The HPC, designed, implemented and maintained by the specialist staff in the UQ Research Computing Centre Collaborative Research Platform, can perform across a wide range of research domains, from the sciences to the humanities, and is available for UQ researchers and QCIF member researchers.
“UQ’s commitment to research and innovation is epitomised in projects like the Bunya supercomputer,” Jake said.
“It would not be possible without the support from our senior leadership, the underpinning network and authentication services provided by UQ’s Information Technology Services division, a focused legal and procurement capability, a motivated team of architects, project managers and scientific computing experts at the UQ Research Computing Centre and the engagement of our supercomputing technology partners, globally.”
Systems and technologies used in this project
- HDR Infiniband Low Latency network interconnects.
- Nvidia SXM5 Liquid cooled H100 GPU nodes for peak performance in AI workloads such as training, large language models (LLMs) and generative AI.
- Nvidia L40S for multi workload acceleration (lighter AI/ML use-cases as well as 3D rendering and full precision calculations).
- A16 GPU nodes for advanced visualisation, real time and interactive workloads.
- AMD Genoa CPU nodes for traditional supercomputing workflows.