NeSI, the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, provides HPC access for users throughout New Zealand. The
primary systems are Mahuika and Maui, Cray clusters based on Intel “Broadwell” and “Skylake” processors,
respectively. NeSI regularly updates capabilities through the addition of both specialized nodes and
expansion of clusters. Usage on both Maui and Mahuika has steadily grown since they were introduced in
2018, and added capacity is required to handle future user demand. This talk will review that usage, plus
the options evaluated for an expected 2021 addition to Mahuika. In particular, HPC technology advances in
processors, system interconnect, and memory technology will be surveyed. By combining these
innovations, an expansion of Mahuika will be summarized, which should serve to enable research for the
New Zealand scientific community in the next years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Zais serves both NeSI and NIWA as the Senior High Performance Computing Architect and
Science Advisor. His academic background includes a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin,
and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in Aerospace Engineering. Professional
experience includes technical and management roles at Ford Aerospace, Cray Research, IBM, and
Lenovo, focused on high performance computing application performance and system architecture.