Penguin Computing Adds Contributions to AMD COVID-19 HPC Fund

Penguin Computing has expanded its collaboration with technology partners AMD and DataBank, to deliver HPC capabilities to accelerate medical research and contribute to more understanding of the novel coronavirus, the companies say.

In June, Penguin Computing was selected by AMD to architect, build, deliver and support cloud resources and on-premises systems for COVID-19 related research. Penguin Computing previously welcomed researchers from New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rice University to the COVID-19 HPC Fund. Now, the first petaflop of cloud-based compute capacity is online and available for researchers to access for pandemic-related research in Penguin Computing’s data center.

The complete cloud deployment includes four petaflops of AMD GPU resources along with the high-speed storage and low-latency networks that COVID-19 research applications require. The user experience on the cluster will be enhanced by Penguin Computing’s cScyld Software suite. These software tools provide provisioning, administration, remote visualization and cloud orchestration. 

The AMD COVID-19 HPC Fund has also added 18 new institutions that will receive AMD-powered, high-performance computing systems delivered by Penguin Computing and through access to Penguin Computing On-Demand (POD) cloud-based resources. These clusters are all powered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC and AMD Radeon Instinct processors. Researchers from University of Texas, University of Toronto, Stanford, UCLA, and 14 other institutions in the U.S. and Europe are among those joining the Fund.

“Penguin Computing is honored by the opportunity to expand our support and contributions to the COVID-19 research efforts through this important collaboration with AMD and Databank. We are committed to providing leading applications and technology expertise in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics to both the on-premises and remote POD cloud environments that will accelerate critical research initiatives,” says Sid Mair, president, Penguin Computing.

“AMD is proud to be working with these leading research institutions to apply high performance computing technology in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Together, we will deepen our understanding of current and future threats to global health, and improve the world’s ability to respond,” says Scott Aylor, corporate VP, AMD global manufacturing strategy and executive sponsor of the AMD COVID-19 HPC Fund. “We thank our technology partners for joining us in giving researchers access to this tremendous compute capacity.”

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.