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 next major expansion of Bunya, known as Phase 4.0, delivers a substantial leap in computing capability, combining next generation CPUs with some of the most powerful GPUs in the world.
Phase 4.0 features 24 AMD Instinct™ MI355x GPUs, 7,680 AMD EPYC 9005 series CPU cores, 43,776 GB of CPU RAM, 6,912 GB of dedicated GPU vRAM, and multiple 400 Gb/s NDR InfiniBand networks, providing a platform designed for large scale simulation, data processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads.
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.
- Phase 3.0: delivered another 2,000 CPU cores; expanded deployment of NVIDIA H100 GPUs; additional NVIDIA L40S GPUs for high single precision (FP32) compute workloads; and NVIDIA A16 GPUs to support visualisation and virtual desktop use.
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.”