MPCDF picture of the month: March 2025
About 420 Petabytes of scientific data is currently stored in our long-term archive. It consists of 55,000 tapes (green and blue boxes) each able to save 9 to 18 Terabytes of data. Several tape robots move the tapes into the tape drives up to 4000 times per day. Each file is stored at two different sites and copied to new tapes every few years to guarantee data integrity for decades. The oldest dataset in our archive has been written to tape more than 40 years ago.
High-performance computing and data analytics application support for the MPG
The MPCDF provides high-level support for the development, optimization, analysis and visualization of high-performance computing (HPC) and data analytics (HPDA) applications to Max-Planck Institutes with high-end computing needs, e.g. in astrophysics, fusion research, materials and bio sciences, polymer research, and theoretical chemistry.
MPG supercomputer Viper
Viper-CPU: Based on AMD EPYC Genoa 9554 processors: 768 CPU compute nodes, 98304 CPU cores, 432 TB RAM (DDR5), 4.9 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64). 200 Gb/s Interconnect (Nvidia NDR200, nonblocking fat-tree fabric over all nodes). Operational since June 2024. Viper-GPU: Based on AMD Instinct MI300A APUs: 228 nodes, 456 MI300A APUs, 57 TB RAM (HBM3). 400 Gb/s Interconnect (Nvidia NDR, nonblocking fat-tree fabric over all nodes). Operational since February 2025.
MPG supercomputer Raven
Based on Intel Xeon IceLake-SP processor 8360Y and Nvidia A100 GPU: 1592 CPU-compute nodes, 114,624 CPU-cores, 457 TB RAM (DDR4), 8.8 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64), 192 GPU-accelerated nodes providing 768 Nvidia A100 GPUs, 30 TB GPU RAM (HBM2), 16 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64, including tensor cores and host CPUs). HDR InfiniBand interconnect.
IBM tape library
IBM TS4500 tape library. In total, MPCDF tape libraries provide a capacity of more than 105,000 LTO tape slots and 200 LTO tape drives and store more than 300 Petabytes of long-term archives (HPSS) and backups (IBM Spectrum Protect). The data archives of Max-Planck scientists include experiment and simulation data from many science areas, e.g. from life and materials sciences, astro and fusion research, and also treasures of the World Heritage like sound recordings of endangered languages or images of historic frescoes.
National and international projects
The MPCDF, in partnership with different Max Planck Institutes is engaged in several national and international projects and research consortia, such as EU Centers of Excellence, with a focus in high-performance computing, data analytics and data management.
Science use cases
The brochure "High-Performance Computing and Data Science in the Max Planck Society" shows examples of cutting-edge science in the Max Planck Society which were enabled by MPCDF services.
Welcome to the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF)
News at MPCDF
News
A team of researchers including the MPCDF used the HPC system Viper (CPU) at MPCDF to perform large-scale performance benchmarks with the molecular-dynamics simulation code gromacs.
The second phase of the new supercomputer Viper of the Max Planck Society is now open for early user operation.
A new issue of the MPCDF computer bulletin Bits&Bytes was released. Read about the availability of the AlphaFold3 software on Raven, the introdution of the MPCDF HPC-monitoring system on the new Viper machine, and other HPC news, about a a new AI ...