TGCC Curie

TGCC Curie
Name	Curie
Operator	CEA
Manufacturer	Bull
Release	2012
Decommissioned	2018
FLOPS	1.3
Memory	1.1
Storage	2.3
Country	France
Location	Bruyères-le-Châtel

TGCC Curie Curie was a petascale supercomputer installed at the Très Grand Centre de Calcul (TGCC) operated by CEA and deployed by Bull to serve European computational science. It provided capacity for high-performance computing across programs such as French universities, CEA, CNRS, and PRACE projects, supporting simulations in fields ranging from climate modeling to nuclear physics.

History

Curie was commissioned following investments by GENCI and procurement involving PRACE allocations and national research priorities under the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. It entered production around 2012 after benchmarks associated with the High Performance Linpack suite and collaborations with vendors including Intel Corporation and NVIDIA. Over its operational life Curie hosted European projects funded through mechanisms like Horizon 2020 and allocations coordinated with institutions such as CEA, CNES, INRIA, and major universities including Sorbonne University and Université Paris-Saclay.

Architecture and Hardware

The system architecture combined compute nodes provisioned by Bull and processors from Intel Xeon families, interconnected via a high-speed network such as InfiniBand. Storage solutions integrated parallel file systems akin to Lustre and hierarchical storage leveraging technologies seen in facilities like NERSC and EPCC. The machine's design reflected trends set by machines like Blue Gene and Cray XT platforms, with water-cooled racks and power distribution strategies similar to those developed for the PRACE Tier-0 centres. Hardware provisioning included thousands of cores, large RAM pools comparable to configurations at CINECA and BSC.

Software and Performance

Curie's software stack featured system management suites comparable to OpenStack-based orchestration, job schedulers like SLURM and Torque, and compilers from GNU Compiler Collection and Intel Parallel Studio. Scientific libraries included MPI implementations such as Open MPI and math libraries paralleling BLAS and LAPACK optimizations used on machines like Titan and Mira. Performance tuning involved benchmarking against HPL and application-level profiling using tools related to VALGRIND and TAU, aiming to maximize sustained petaflops for workflows in computational fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics similar to projects at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Users and Research Projects

User communities encompassed researchers from CEA, CNRS, INRIA, and international partners through PRACE allocations, while project domains included climate change simulation efforts comparable to work at Met Office and ECMWF, astrophysics computations like those undertaken at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, combustion modeling in collaboration with ONERA, and materials science investigations akin to initiatives at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Large-scale campaigns ran applications such as WRF, GROMACS, OpenFOAM, and bespoke solvers developed at institutions including CEA and CNRS laboratories.

Location and Facilities

Curie was housed in the TGCC data centre at Bruyères-le-Châtel within the Île-de-France region, colocated with research laboratories and infrastructure supporting energy-efficiency programs similar to those at Jülich Supercomputing Centre and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. The site incorporated redundant power from national grids tied to strategies used by RTE and cooling systems reflecting standards from ASHRAE guidance and European data centre practices. Support services included user training akin to workshops run by PRACE and collaboration suites comparable to those at EuroHPC partner sites.

Decommissioning and Legacy

Curie was gradually retired as successor systems were deployed through GENCI and European investments in EuroHPC infrastructure, with hardware recycling and knowledge transfer following protocols used at NERSC and HLRS. Its legacy includes contributions to scientific publications across climate science, particle physics, and computational chemistry, influence on procurement and architecture decisions for later machines such as those funded by EuroHPC JU, and the development of user workflows now maintained at centres like CINECA and BSC. The human capital trained on Curie assisted transitions to forthcoming platforms under European supercomputing initiatives.

Category:Supercomputers in France