HPE, together with the Swiss, is going to build

a supercomputer

and use it to simulate the mammalian brain.

According to HPE’s press release, the new Blue Brain 5 supercomputer will be used for neuroscience simulation and simulation-based research, analysis and visualisation. The goal of the project is to ‘advance the understanding of the brain’.

“Our mission is to create technologies that improve our quality of life, including powering technologies for the healthcare industry to deliver targeted treatments and save lives,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO,

HPE

.

“Through our relationship with the Blue Brain Project, HPE is bringing

advanced supercomputing

and bespoke applications to empower new research that can have transformative benefits for the neuroscientific community and society at large.”

HPE was awarded the job from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s (EPFL), a Swiss brain research initiative. The machine will be built upon the HPE SGI 8600 System.

It is comprised of 372 compute nodes delivering 1.06 petaflops of peak performance. The system is equipped with 94 terabytes of memory, and runs Intel Xeon Gold 6140 and Intel Xeon Phi 7230 processors, as well as NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphic processors. Dual-rail Mellanox InfiniBand high-performance networks will be used. The device is also equipped with four petabytes of high-performance storage from DataDirect Networks (DDN).

Image source: Shutterstock/violetkaipa