HPE just unveiled a next-gen HPC cluster at the University of Southampton: Iridis 6 uses ProLiant Gen11 servers powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors — and it’s four-times more powerful than its predecessor

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has unveiled a sixth-generation high-performance computing cluster, Iridis 6, for the University of Southampton.

The new system upgrades and expands on the existing capabilities of its predecessor Iridis 5, which was first introduced in 2018 and went straight into the Top500 supercomputer list at number 251.

Iridis 6 will improve the system's sustainability and performance, HPE revealed, and will advance the university's existing research in areas such as genomics, aerodynamics, and renewable batteries.

Key projects will include what's claimed to be the biggest ever space debris study, highlighting the risk posed by satellite ‘mega-constellations’.

The University of Southampton said it provides some of the largest UK-based high performance computing (HPC) resources to the public and commercial sectors, and offers consultancy and research services to UK businesses.

Over the last year, it's seen increased demand for HPC capabilities, driven by a growth in AI research efforts and an increase in the number of joint projects it's engaging in with local and regional businesses.

"Investing in state-of-the-art high performance computing infrastructure is crucial to ensure that the UK's prized scientific and research communities have the tools they need to be globally competitive," said Matt Harris, senior vice president and managing director for the UK, Ireland, the Middle East and Africa at HPE.

"The University of Southampton's major investment in Iridis 6 will support the next wave of scientific breakthroughs. We are proud to be helping the University accelerate research and innovation that will contribute to growing the science and technology ecosystem in the UK."

Everything you need to know about Iridis 6

The new system was built using HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, powered by fourth-generation AMD EPYC processors, with the aim of providing advanced performance to support computational science at-scale. 

HPE Services is providing dedicated onsite support in building, testing, and deploying the system, and said it's deploying Iridis 6 to optimize workloads to efficiently process compute and data-intensive research.

"We are very conscious of the fact that our HPC systems are responsible for a significant part of our energy consumption,” said Chris Yorke, associate director, research IT, at the University of Southampton.

“To align with our sustainability strategy for Iridis 6, we required a system that would deliver exponentially higher performance at a lower power consumption – and HPE’s expertise in building energy-efficient HPC systems was crucial in achieving this.

"With the HPE ProLiant servers, we found a solution that provides four times the performance, needing only 70% of the power compared to the system it replaces.”