Pico
Pico
Storage and processing of large volumes of data
PICO is named after Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Modena, humanist and philosopher of the 1400s, renowned for his prodigious memory.
It is intended to enable new “BigData” classes of applications, related to the management and processing of large quantities of data, coming both from simulations and experiments. Particular reference is put on all emerging scenarios as interactive model (Urgent Computing model), as well as new paradigms of resource utilization through “Cloud Computing” technology. The coexistence of virtualization technologies (cloud computing), orchestration technologies (access on demand) and high performance computing (Tier-0 and Tier-1 systems), completes the data-centric architecture of the HPC infrastracture of CINECA.
PICO is made of an Intel NeXtScale server, designed to optimize density and performance, driving a large data repository shared among all the HPC systems in CINECA.
The storage area is composed by high throughput disks (based on GSS technology) for a total amount of about 4 PB, connected with a large capacity tape library for a total actual amount of 12 PByte (expandible to 16 PByte).
The storage area is accessible from all HPC systems in CINECA (under the $DATA name) an is organised on the basis of projects. Each active project on any HPC system has a corresponding entry on $DATA.
The storage area is a “multi-level” memory. Depending on the defined policy, data migrate automatically on the tape, in a transparent way with respect to the user.
Model: IBM NeXtScale
| Total Nodes | CPU | Cores per Nodes | Memory (RAM) | Notes | |
| Compute/login node | 66 | Intel Xeon E5 2670 v2 @2.5Ghz | 20 | 128 GB | |
| Visualization node | 2 | Intel Xeon E5 2670 v2 @ 2.5Ghz | 20 | 128 GB | 2 GPU Nvidia K40 |
| Big Mem node | 2 | Intel Xeon E5 2650 v2 @ 2.6 Ghz | 16 | 512 GB | 1 GPU Nvidia K20 |
| BigInsight node | 4 | Intel Xeon E5 2650 v2 @ 2.6 Ghz | 16 | 64 GB | 32TB of local disk |
