Events

Launch of Bamboo

Image

We are pleased to announce the official launch of the UNIGE's new high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, called ‘Bamboo’. 

As a reminder, a cluster is an ideal HPC solution when your workstation is not sufficient or when you need to carry out a large number of simultaneous calculations. This technology is particularly advantageous when you need to perform calculations that require substantial hardware resources. Clusters can also be used to run specific processors (GPUs) for graphical simulations (3D), Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence, for example. 

Bamboo was commissioned on 1 July 2024 and completes the family of HPC services at the UNIGE, which now has three members: Baobab (since 2013), Yggdrasil (since 2019) and Bamboo: great news for research at our institution. It is also the latest cluster to be funded by the Digital Infrastructure and Services for Research programme.

Hosted in the Campus Biotech Datacenter, Bamboo was installed by the IT Division - HPC teams (Service Rise). The Swiss company Dalco partnered the teams during the installation phase, as it did for Baobab and Yggdrasil in the past. Bamboo's specifications were drawn up in collaboration with SciCos, a team of computer science experts at UNIGE.  

Suitable for both experienced and novice users, Bamboo offers ergonomic access via the OpenOnDemand graphical portal. It should be noted that Bamboo is due to double in size over the next few years, in order to increase its power.


Access, features and documentation

  • Bamboo can be used by UNIGE members and external collaborators as part of educational or research projects. It is also open to researchers from Geneva's higher education institutions (HES-SO Genève). It should be noted that from 2025, a fee will be charged for the use of the computing clusters once a certain number of computing hours has been reached.
  • Bamboo boasts a top-flight technical résumé, including 5,700 AMD processors, 20 GPUs and more than 1GB of dedicated storage, including fast storage that will greatly accelerate calculations.For more details, see the technical documentation.

 

The HPC team will be happy to answer any questions you may have.