Centrale Nantes Supercomputing facilities, one of the most powerful tier-2 machines in France

The supercomputing facilities at Centrale Nantes are one of the most powerful in the tier-2 category in France. They form part of GLiCID (see below) which brings together the region's equipment. GLiCID is one of the regional centres across France in a nationwide structure - MesoNET (see below) - that brings together digital simulation, high-performance computing, associated with artificial intelligence (AI) methods, access to a Quantum Learning Machine and training in quantum computing. GLiCID is one of the few regional centres that are open to students.
 

High performance computing (HPC)

A 24-hour calculation on a conventional PC takes only a few minutes on a supercomputer.
High performance computing is an indispensable tool for both research and industry: it reduces the cost of testing, facilitates optimization and promotes creativity and the search for new solutions. The means of calculation are also an indicator of the research and development of a region, or a nation.

HPC consists of using software for acquisition, modeling or analysis on supercomputers of several thousand processors capable of executing several billion operations per second to model complex phenomena, process or characterise large volumes of data. It is also a set of servers designed to run long-term processes to massively and intensively calculate programs. These supercomputers can be seen as a large number of machines (computing servers) linked together by very high-speed networks.

Who can use the facilities?

Students at the school can benefit from this state-of-the-art equipment during their courses for example in the engineering programme specialisations e.g. Digital sciences for life sciences and healthcare or Ocean: Hydrodynamics and Marine Engineering. Students from other institutions in the region can also make use the of the facilities.

Access to the facilities is also open to private companies and publicly funded research projects (subject to a charge), as well as to certain projects selected by a technical and scientific committee (free of charge).

The Supercomputing facility at Centrale Nantes today brings together the Nautilus and Phileas clusters:
 

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About GLiCID

GLiCID is a Research Support Unit (Unité d'Appui à la Recherche - UAR) under the joint supervision of the University of Angers, Centrale Nantes, Le Mans Université and Nantes Université. Its aim is to meet the needs of the region's researchers and their academic and/or industrial partners for intensive computing and associated data storage resources. To achieve this, GLiCID merged five existing scientific computing structures in the region: BiRD and CCIPL (Nantes Université), CNSC (Centrale Nantes), INFRALAB (Le Mans Université) and MATSTIC (Université Angers).

GLiCID currently brings together this old equipment and the new equipment acquired since 2021. By the end of the 2021-2027 CPER, most of the older equipment will have been discontinued and GLiCID will only have its own equipment, acquired with State, CPER and PIA3 funds. The older equipment is installed at Centrale Nantes, in the Nantes University data centre, and in the computer rooms of the Universities of Angers and Le Mans. The new equipment will be installed in the DaCaS data centre, scheduled to be completed in early 2026. In the meantime, the first tranche of the CPER has been installed at Centrale Nantes (NAUTILUS and PHILEAS clusters).

To sum up, GLiCID currently has more than 16,300 cores of all types, 100TB of RAM, 80 GPUs, 1.5MB of fast storage and 4MB of CEPH storage.
 

• Learn more about GLiCID (in French)

GLiCID Supervision

GLiCID Funding

About MesoNET

GLiCID is one of the 21 regional sites forming the MesoNET network.

MesoNET aims to meet the needs of academic and industrial researchers through the development of structuring digital equipment. The main idea is to strengthen the structuring of national and regional offerings in digital simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), associated with artificial intelligence (AI) methods, with access to a QLM and training in quantum computing. The primary objective is to set up a distributed regional infrastructure, with at least one mesocentre per region, to act as a reference point and regional relay. The infrastructure, integrated into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative, should have a significant impact on the appropriation by researchers of national and regional digital and public AI infrastructures.

The Mesonet project, part of the PIA3 programme, involves 22 partners: GENCI, the coordinating partner, and 21 regional mesocentres (including GLiCID), 20 of which are under university supervision and one of which is an association. It began on 1 October 2021 and will run for 6 years. The budget is €30.4m, of which €14.2m is funded by the PIA (grant awarding agreement no. ANR-21-ESRE-0051).
 

• Learn more about MesoNET (in French)

How to get access to MesoNET

(in French)