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HPC provides today's researchers
with an essential means of investigation that
helps them push back the boundaries of science

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HPC provides today’s researchers with an essential means of investigation that helps them push back the boundaries of science and accelerate time-to-discovery. However, most Education and Research customers have research activities that span many disciplines – physics, chemistry, biosciences, earth and ocean sciences, mathematics, medicine, engineering… This breadth of applications can lead to complex IT requirements. Bull is ready to help, with integrated and flexible HPC solutions that leave researchers free to focus on their research – not on cluster administration or data management.

Why Bull for Education and Research

A proven track record of designing and deploying large complex systems at numerous research institutes and universities in Europe and around the world.

Bull has implemented several petascale systems and many TOP500-class HPC systems for renowned Research Centres – and many smaller systems in University Departments and other smaller sites. Dozens of Universities and Research Institutes in France, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Slovenia and Brazil rely on Bull HPC solutions to boost their research and generate breakthrough discoveries.

The expertise of the Bull Extreme COmputing Competence Centre at your disposal – in Europe

Capitalizing on our experience on pioneering projects, Bull’s Extreme Computing Competence Centre is established as a leading facility in Europe. Our HPC specialists provide expert-to-expert support as part of customer projects. And the proximity of our Extreme COmputing Competence Centre, located in the French Alps, greatly facilitates exchanges with European customers.

Bull’s HPC benchmarking team has high-level expertise in optimizing user applications. They have helped many scientific customers optimize their codes for maximum performance.

Bull partners with leading research consortia to develop advanced HPC technologies

Bull is playing an active role in many French and European research consortia to develop the Extreme Computing technologies of tomorrow. This is a major opportunity for Bull to exchange with advanced Extreme Computing users and understand the expectations of the HPC community. Bull is committed to projects such as:

HPC technology platform: ETP4HPC
Energy efficient HPC solution projects: COOL IT, MONT-BLANC, SHARP, OpenGPU
Cloud Computing projects for HPC: XLcloud, COMPATIBLE-ONE, EASI-CLOUDS
Software stack and tools (Application parallelizing, debugging and optimizing, fault tolerance, energy efficiency optimization): H4H, NEWCASTLE, ENERGETIC
Co-design projects for application sectors: H4H (Manufacturing, Gas & Petrol), CARE4ME (Health), ACDC (Multimedia), CSDL (Complex systems design), APAS-IPK (Life Sciences), VULCAIN (Industrial Safety), PULSATION (Climatology)

Bull is a founding member of:

ETP4HPC, a European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing created by major suppliers of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies including Allinea, ARM, Bull, Caps Entreprise, Eurotech, IBM, Intel, ParTec, STMicroelectronics and Xyratex, in association with HPC research centres BSC, CEA, CINECA, Fraunhofer, Forschungszentrum Juelich and LRZ. ETP4HPC's ambition is to improve Europe's position in the domain of HPC technologies (http://www.etp4hpc.eu/).
the Ter@tec association - 49 organisations coming from fundamental research, industry and information technologies join their efforts to promote and contribute to the development of High-Performance Computing and Simulations in Europe (http://www.teratec.eu/gb/)

An extensive experience in partnership and knowledge transfer with academic customers

As Europe’s only IT manufacturer, Bull is keen to partner with European Universities and Research Institutes in different technology fields. With Bull’s R&D centres in the European time zone, collaborative working can be both practical and effective – for the mutual benefit of both partners.

For example, Bull has been collaborating for many years with CEA, with the University of Reims-Champagne-Ardenne, with Cardiff University.

Bull and the CEA (French Atomic Agency) have implemented a long-term partnership, which resulted in particular in the design of Tera 100, the first European petaflops-scale supercomputer.

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Bull proposed to Cardiff University an innovative cooperation package, with the creation of a joint HPC “Centre of Excellence” to promote the use of HPC and a Quick Start Training Programme that takes a partnership approach – including knowledge transfer. Since then, Cardiff University renewed its trust in Bull and purchased a new bullx supercomputer.

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