Technology Donation for Corona Research

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With technology against the COVID-19 virus: US chip developer AMD is supporting the search for vaccines against corona with high-end computer systems and access to Penguin-on-Demand (POD) clusters in the cloud, which are operated with the new second-generation EPYC and Radeon processors. In addition to 19 research facilities around the world, the technology donations will also be installed at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) and the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). “Supporting world-class research with cutting-edge IT technology is the key focus at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. This generous AMD donation puts us in the position to offer our partners in the domain of personalized medicine innovative artificial intelligence solutions”, Prof. Dr. Dieter Kranzlmüller, Director of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities says. “While this allows them to address the immediate research needs around COVID-19 in much better ways, including working on improved diagnostic quality and speed, we’re implementing our vision to further integrate HPC and AI to be used in personalized medicine. This will enable our partners to establish high-impact improvements to the treatment of patients suffering from other diseases in the long-term.”

In the fight against the pandemic, AMD set up its own fund of technology and financial resources. In addition to the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as New York University (NYU) and Rice University in a first phase, other universities and institutes will gradually be provided with computing power until the end of 2020. Until the 4th quarter six GPU Compute Servers with one AMD EPYC-CPU each as well as eight AMD MI50 GPU with 32 Gigabyte RAM plus local NVMe storage will be installed at the LRZ. They support the ongoing COVID-19 projects in researching the virus' mode of action, simulating droplet infection and developing vaccines. AMD is donating a total of 12 petaflops of computing power to the research. Assembled into a supercomputer, it would rank among the top 500 fastest supercomputers. “AMD is proud to be working with leading global research institutions to bring the power of high performance computing technology to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,” said Mark Papermaster, executive vice president and chief technology officer, AMD. “These donations of AMD EPYC and Radeon Instinct processors will help researchers not only deepen their understanding of COVID-19, but also help improve our ability to respond to future potential threats to global health.”(vs)