Thanks to an investment of $1,150 million, corresponding to the Major Equipment Fund of the National Research and Development Agency, and contributions from the Mathematical Modeling Center of the University of Chile, the National High Performance Computing Laboratory (NLHPC) managed to renew and quadruple its computing capacity by replacing the Leftraru cluster and giving way to “Leftraru Epu”, equipment that will be available to the entire scientific community in the country.
This new equipment has just been installed in the second basement of the North building at Beauchef 851, headquarters of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile. There, the supercomputer is already carrying out its first work together with Guacolda (Dell cluster, 2019), a unit with which completes 4 petabytes of IBM Elastic Storage System storage (IBM ESS 3200).
Leftraru Epu (name in Mapudungún that means Lautaro 2 in Spanish) has components from the processor manufacturer AMD, servers from Lenovo and the deployment of the Chilean company Emtec, which won the tender for the development of this new infrastructure. It has 7,360 computing cores, 260 teraflops of performance, 12 graphics processing units (GPU, AMD Instinct MI210) and 24,320 gigabytes of RAM in a single rack.
Energy efficiency
Gines Guerreroexecutive director of the National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (NLHPC), noted that “we have taken an important step with the installation of Leftraru 2, which puts us in a more competitive position in the region. However, even with this acquisition, we are still far from covering the growing computing needs that Chile faces. “Demand for processing power continues to rise, especially in critical areas such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics.”
“It is imperative that we continue to strengthen the NLHPC so as not to be left behind and to be able to face the scientific and technological challenges of the future. The road is long and we need continuous commitment from all sectors to achieve our goals. “Supercomputing infrastructure is an essential requirement for the development of any country,” she added. In this line, she explained that “Leftraru 2 is four times more powerful than its predecessor. This consolidates us as a complete and high-performance solution for the largest scientific network in Chile.. The supercomputer is used by the entire national community. “The researchers present their projects and then an expert committee evaluates the approval for the allocation of use time.”
He general manager of the Lenovo ISG Area for Argentina and Chile, Christian Young, highlighted that “this is our first supercomputer of this magnitude. The choice made by the CMM is Lenovo and AMD because of the power it offered, allowing peaks of high-performance continuous use (…) We have an area dedicated to high-performance computing and we have the largest clusters in Latin America.”
In that aspect, the general manager of Emtec Chile, Mario Gutiérrezpointed out that “the biggest challenge of the project was cooling, because it had to be integrated into the existing cluster with all the rack technology, which ended up cooling by water, and obtain the necessary teraflops.”
The role of the State
Chile is currently far from the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world and to enter you would need a computer five times more powerful than Leftraru Epu. Only Brazil registers eight machines in that ranking, which are focused on the oil industry; while Argentina and its Clementina XXI, specialized in the National Meteorological Service, is located in 224th place.
In conversation with El Mercurio about this scientific milestone, the Minister of Science of Chile, Aisen Etcheverrystated that “computing capacity is one of the fundamental components to advance in scientific and technological matters. He who does not compute, does not compete. That the NLHPC quadruples the power of Guacolda is tremendous news that we celebrate“. He also revealed that “today the NLHPC covers more than 40 different research areas, starting with physics and chemistry, discovery of new materials, bioinformatics, astroinformatics, climate, study of climate change, weather forecasting, study of quality of air. Having these capabilities also has an impact on our companies and our public sector to be able to innovate.”.
The Secretary of State also maintained that “computing capabilities in artificial intelligence, for example, are a necessity. Today Chile does not have these capabilities and as a Government, hand in hand with the NLHPC and other actors, we are developing a plan to have them. “We require private investment and also public investment to sustain the digital leadership that Chile has, and if we are already thinking about artificial intelligence, we also have to prepare for the next emerging technologies.”
Until now, The State – through ANID – has invested a total of $5,084 million in the development of this high-performance computing program, which in 2009 was created by the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the University of Chile, together with the universities of La Frontera, Talca, Federico Santa María, Santiago, Católica de Chile, Católica del Norte and la Red National University (REUNA). It officially began operating in 2011 and then, in 2022, after the creation of the National Supercomputing Laboratory, it brings together 45 associated institutions: 39 universities, five research centers and REUNA.
Future look
Héctor Ramírez, director of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the University of Chile, related that “15 years ago we had the vision to notice the country’s need to compute large amounts of data from all scientific fields. Today more than 500 researchers and academics benefit from the service, which allows the annual materialization of more than 200 projects, over 200 publications and a number of more than 90 undergraduate and postgraduate theses.“.
“In our center we work, among other areas, in astronomy, satellite images and data obtained from the ocean by national and international expeditions. Analysis is done and artificial intelligence tools that require supercomputing are used. We have also used it in health matters, a line that I direct. The tests are done with supercomputing where many combinations of scenarios are required, but then solutions are found for the real capacity of hospitals that do not have installed supercomputing capacity,” explained the also professor at the U. of Chile.
The 2023 National Prize for Exact Sciences, CMM researcher and scientific director of the NLHPC, Jaime San Martinstressed that “Supercomputing is a basic and key tool for scientific development, human capital formation, technological, industrial and public policy development in all countries.. For several years now, supercomputing has been fundamental for modeling and the massive use of data, and is also an important part of the intellectual and technological independence of Chile.”
“The NLHPC promotes use in academia, industry and the State, providing services to a large part of Chile’s scientific capacity. But, in addition, several applied research groups that our State has also use these capabilities, in a cooperation model quite unprecedented in our country, with equitable access to Chilean researchers, independent of their institution and the area of knowledge they cultivate,” he emphasized.
Mathematical Modeling Center
The CMM is today the most active scientific research institution in mathematical modeling in Latin America. It is a center of excellence of the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) of Chile made up of eight associated universities and located in the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile. In addition, it is the International Research Laboratory (IRL) #2807 of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France.
Its mission is to create mathematics to respond to problems in other sciences, industry and public policies.. It seeks to develop science with the highest standards, excellence and rigor in areas such as data science, climate and biodiversity, education, resource management, mining and digital health.
National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (NLHPC)
The National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (NLHPC) is the national supercomputing center of Chile. It specializes in high-performance computing and manages Guacolda-Leftraru Epu, the most powerful supercomputer in the country and one of the most powerful in South America.
Since its origin in 2011, offers computing resources to the entire national scientific community in a centralized manner and under equal conditions. It encourages the collaboration of the country’s scientific community around multi, inter and transdisciplinary projects to enhance the impact of this critical infrastructure on R&D&I, and, finally, on the development of Chile. It also aims contribute to national development beyond science, improving the competitiveness of the business fabric, and promoting innovation in the public sector.
