HPC4AI

High-Performance Computing for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Turin

The University of Turin has created an open-access laboratory on High-Performance Computing (HPC) for Artificial Intelligence (AI). A centre capable of collaborating with entrepreneurs to boost their ability to innovate on data-driven technologies and applications.

Services

Designed to foster research collaborations

We are open to collaborations in research projects (EU, National, Regional). HPC4Ai currently support 10+ EU research project in different research areas, and it is the integration platform for the whole ADMIRE EuroHPC project. The Computer Science Department, with its 90+ professors, covers the major research areas: HPC, AI (Deep/Federated Learning, Reasoning, Perception, …), BigData, UI/UX, Blockchain, Algorithms, Edge/IoT.

Request a test or production access using the form on the contact page. UNITO’s researchers, PhD and students can request free access (if eligible, see pricing).

Computing support for research projects and pre-commercial solutions

HPC4AI implements a cloud-HPC system targeting AI workloads. Designed for research, allowing end-to-end configuration options: from HW to OS to cloud to service. The portfolio of services includes VMs+Storage, virtual clusters with access to OpenStack API (IaaS & PaaS). Ready to manage critical data (NGS, medical imagining, radiomics, finance, etc.).

Examples:
– Banca D’Italia games – http://4s4s.hpc4ai.it
– HiC data explorer – http://neohic.hpc4ai.it
– PRAISE score of acute coronary syndrome – http://praise.hpc4ai.it

Robust production system with fair pricing and support for experimental systems

HPC4AI cloud production system has been running for 3 years with zero incidents due to a robust configuration based on a self-stabilising automata that manage the system. A twin system called Playground is dedicated to developing new solutions, which are moved to production after extensive testing. HPC4AI playground is also the UNITO’s zoo for exotic computing systems: RISC-V systems and accelerators, novel Arm systems such as NVidia dev-kit and (when it will available) the EU-designed Rhea processor from the European Processor Initiative SGA.

Explore UNITA programme for the sharing of research infrastructures

Systems

Tier-III green datacentre (1.1 PUE) for convergent computing

HPC4AI is hosted in a self-designed 250KVA 16 racks Tier-III adiabatic green data centre, running over 90% of energy efficiency. See the HPC4AI real-time energy monitor (load, energy, PUE, etc.) and the environmental monitor (temperature, humidity, VOC, PM10/2.5, CO2, NH3, etc.). HPC4AI review the traditional usage of cloud and HPC systems to serve AI applications. The cloud provides a modern interface for HPC, and HPC serves as an accelerator for the cloud. A novel 2-phase cooling server (CPU+GPU) is currently under development.

GPU-enabled multi-tenant cloud with HPC4AI’s unique management tools

An OpenStack cloud system exploiting over 2400 physical cores, 60 TB RAM, 120 GPUs (NVidia T4/V100/A40), 25 Gb/s networking and 4 storage classes with different characteristics and costs. HPC4AI run UNITO’s designed management tools, such as the OpenDeepHealth PaaS to deploy private/secure/elastic instances of Kubernetes extended with single sign-on with identity and access management (keycloack), and VPN and firewall management (pfsense). OpenDeepHealth has been selected by the EU innovation program 2023.

Modular HPC system with UrgentSLURM

A modular HPC system with 68 nodes Intel (32 cores, 128GB RAM per node, OPA 100Gb/s), 4 nodes Arm (Ampere Altra 80 cores, 512GB RAM, 2xA100, GPUs, 2xBF2 DPUs, IB 100Gb/s), 4 nodes Intel (40 cores, 1 TB RAM, T4+V100 GPUs, IB 56Gb/s), 2 HPC storage systems (BeeGFS and LUSTRE all-flash). The system is managed with HPC4AI UrgentSLUM, a self-developed SLURM extension to manage the booking of nodes via a web calendar.

Designed for research: experimental systems and award-winning tools

HPC4AI provides developers with experimental systems, such SiFive RISCV servers, Esperanto RISC-V boards, NVidia dev-kit with Bluefield DPUs, as with novel tools for converged computing cloud-HPC that are the foreground technology of UNITO’s research, such as the StreamFlow WMS, and Jupyter-workflow co-lab. Streamflow has been selected by the EU innovation program 2023.