Background
Shared research facility: High-Performance Computing cluster Anunna
Anunna, the high-performance cluster is a shared research facility available at Wageningen Campus, partly thanks to a subsidy from the RegioDeal Foodvalley. Anunna offers possibilities for data storage, large-scale computing tasks and artificial intelligence analyses.
Shared usage
This advanced facility is available for shared use by researchers from organizations both within and outside Wageningen Campus, enabling data and knowledge exchange among them. Alexander van Ittersum, Product Owner Compute & Platform Solutions and Research IT Solutions at WUR, highlights the benefits of shared use: ‘Thanks to shared use of the HPC, organizations can work more cost-effectively and exchange knowledge and data when needed.’
The shared usage of Anunna is of great importance to WUR, as it supports various research and educational purposes of the university, providing significantly more capabilities and capacity for complex data analyses and machine learning, as well as facilitating data and knowledge exchange with other organizations. Investment through Shared Research Facilities has also significantly improved storage capacity and graphical computing power, partly thanks to a subsidy from the Foodvalley Regional Deal. Alexander van Ittersum mentions that ‘Thanks to this investment, the HPC offers the ability to process large-scale visual materials, such as drone videos.’
Anne Boshove, a researcher at Topigs Norsvin and a user of Anunna, emphasises the importance of shared usage: ‘We perform extensive analyses only a few times a year. If we had to purchase an HPC system ourselves, it would be relatively expensive and a waste of capacity.’ Martijn Derks, also a researcher at Topigs Norsvin and a lecturer at Animal Breeding & Genomics at WUR, adds: ‘For complex calculations involving a lot of genetic variation and the desired connection to phenotypic traits, significant memory is required. The expansion of Anunna's data storage is therefore crucial to us.’
Knowledge and data exchange
Martijn Derks continues: ‘Sharing our data with research partners like WUR is crucial for student projects and PhD candidates, allowing them to fully benefit from this source of research information. On the other hand, Topigs Norsvin can have research and analyses conducted by WUR using these datasets, which we don't have time for ourselves. This mutual data and knowledge exchange is highly valuable to us.’
Ioannis Athanasiadis, Professor of Artificial Intelligence Data Science at Wageningen University and Research emphasises: ‘The availability of computing power is of utmost importance for our organisation and plays a crucial role in the advancement of AI for both research and education, and the impact we, as WUR, aim to make in society. It is also an essential infrastructure for developing and testing AI solutions in the WUR domains in cooperation with our partners, like, for example, AgrifoodTEF, the European network for testing and experimenting with AI solutions in the agrifood sector that WUR is part of.’
In addition, Anunna contributes to education on climate change as well. ‘It allows students to delve into large climate datasets to analyse trends and assess long-term feedbacks and impacts in various climate scenarios. In the MSc course ‘Atmospheric Modelling’ students run a weather model for the very first time, to learn about the (un)predictability of the atmosphere. This hands-on experience with HPC prepares students for careers in weather and climate research, consultancy or industry where data-intensive modelling is essential’, according to Sjoerd Barten, WUR-researcher on Atmospheric data and models.
Environmentally friendly and cost-effective
A noteworthy feature of Anunna is its water-cooling system, which is up to 80% more energy-efficient than air-cooled systems, making it both environmentally friendly and cost-effective. Anunna is part of the European supercomputing network and holds a regional Tier-2 status. The supercomputer is housed in one of WUR's two data centres.
Alexander van Ittersum says: ‘In many research projects, we see that the required IT infrastructure for AI plays a prominent role. With Anunna and, especially, the accompanying support that can be provided, we reduce complexity for researchers. They can focus primarily on their research, while the (sometimes complex) task of setting up and maintaining the required infrastructure is handled by IT.’
Interested?
For further information about Anunna and its shared usage, please get in touch with Shared Research Facilities. To learn more about Anunna's capabilities for research applications and training for researchers and students, please contact Alexander van Ittersum. For more functional information about Anunna, visit our shared equipment database.
