The No. 6 national supercomputer will begin official service in December.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) said on the 9th that they have completed the buildout of the No. 6 national supercomputer and, ahead of the official service, will begin recruiting industry-academia-research researchers to use its computing resources. The No. 6 system is currently undergoing performance and stability testing and is aiming to launch official service in December.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and KISTI signed a contract to build the No. 6 supercomputer with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) in May last year and completed system installation and basic checks in August. They plan to move into full operation after verifying performance and stability.
The No. 6 supercomputer is equipped with 8,496 graphics processing units (GPUs), including Nvidia's GH200, and 9,936 central processing units (CPUs). Its theoretical computing performance is 614 PF (petaflops), storage is 205 PB (petabytes), and network speed is at least 400 Gbps.
Compared with the existing No. 5 national supercomputer, theoretical computing performance is up 24 times, storage 10 times, and network performance four times. The Ministry of Science and ICT expects the No. 6 system to rank around the global top 10 based on the latest Top500 list of supercomputers.
The No. 6 supercomputer will be used for large-scale computational science and data simulation, as well as artificial intelligence (AI)-based scientific research. Until now, research institutes and corporations had to secure high-performance GPUs on their own or use private cloud services, creating not-insignificant burdens in terms of expense and data security. The government plans to improve research-field access to large-scale computing resources through the No. 6 system.
Computing resources will be allocated across three programs by purpose: national strategy, research and development (R&D) innovation, and industrial innovation. About 30% of total resources will go to the national strategy program, which targets national-level projects with high importance and urgency, such as securing national strategic technologies. Major research and development projects such as K-Moonshot and the seven SEEDs will also receive priority resources.
About 55% of total resources will be allocated to the R&D innovation program. It supports computing resources needed for large-scale simulations, computational science, and AI-based research by general industry-academia-research researchers. Depending on the scale of support, projects are categorized as large-scale research, creative research, and exploratory research. Large-scale research that requires ultra-large simulations or ultra-parallel computing will receive resources equivalent to 50 nodes. Creative research will support general computational science and AI research at a scale of 2 to 49 nodes.
An exploratory research track to support early-stage idea validation will also be newly introduced. After minimal review, it will allocate resources equivalent to one node. One node of the No. 6 supercomputer consists of four GH200s.
An industrial innovation program for corporations will also be newly established. It will allocate about 15% of total resources and provide consulting and technical support from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) along with computing resources. It targets research and development needs of small and venture corporations that find it difficult to build their own high-performance computing infrastructure.
Applications to use the official service will be accepted on the National Supercomputing Center website from the 28th to 6 p.m. on Oct. 16. Users will be selected after document review and a review committee evaluation, and selected researchers and corporations will be allocated computing resources starting in December.
A pilot service will also run ahead of full operation. Applications for the pilot service will be accepted from Sept. 23 to Oct. 8, and selected researchers will be able to use the system from late October to mid-November.
KISTI President Lee Sik said, "We are preparing to provide stable service of the No. 6 supercomputer," adding, "We will support researchers and corporations so they can use supercomputing resources in their research." Kim Seong-su, director general for research and development policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "We plan to use the No. 6 supercomputer to secure national strategic technologies and drive innovation in industry-academia-research."