The primary objective of the eX3 project is to provide an experimental, heterogeneous computational cluster as a national infrastructure that will help Norwegian HPC researchers, HPC/Big Data users, data center management, and HPC industry prepare for the coming exascale era of computing.
Together with partners, Simula Research Laboratory is establishing eX3 to become the previously missing national resource that can pave the way for exascale computing in Norway. The eX3 infrastructure is currently funded for five years through the RCN program for national research infrastructures (grant n◦ 270053). In addition to the host institution Simula, the project consortium also counts the national HPC management body Sigma2, HPC research groups from the University of Tromsø, NTNU, the University of Bergen, and OsloMet, as well as the HPC technology providers Graphcore, Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, and Numascale.
The eX3 infrastructure will not be an exascale computer by itself, but it will be a carefully curated ecosystem of technology components that will be crucial for embracing exascale computing. It will allow HPC researchers throughout Norway and their collaborators to experiment hands-on with emerging HPC technologies – hardware as well as software.
In the eX3 project, the Arctic Green Computing group is the leader of the work package on single-device utilization.
