Raphael Thys
Virga is a fast, powerful, energy-efficient, boosting Australia’s science, industry, and economy.
Australia has developed a high-performance computer (HPC) system, which is rated 72nd out of the top 500 machines worldwide.
Known as Virga, this $14.5 million system is the first of its kind in Australia and is constructed on Dell PowerEdge XE9640 servers.
The new system is being built by Australia’s national research agency, CSIRO, with the goal of providing the necessary computing infrastructure for AI and machine learning to boost the country’s industry and economy.
With the creation of the first CSIRO GPU Cluster in 2009, CSIRO led the way in introducing accelerated computing utilizing GPUs in Australia.
“High-performance computing systems like Virga also play an important role in our robotics and sensing work and are crucial to the recently launched National Robotics Strategy to drive competitiveness and productivity of Australian industry, said Elanor Huntington, Executive Director of Digital, National Facilities and Collections at CSIRO, in a statement.
Recently, the US Department of Energy made history in supercomputing, as its Aurora HPC broke the exascale barrier, securing the top two spots for the world’s most powerful systems.
Since its first computing system in 1949, CSIRO’s peak computing performance has surged by nearly 14 orders of magnitude.
Advanced computing system
The Canberra Data Centre (CDC) is home to the HPC cluster Virga. The cluster’s name comes from the meteorological phenomenon of rain that evaporates before it hits the ground. CSIRO’s studies on the physics of rain and clouds inspired its name.
The Virga computing cluster is equipped with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs designed to enhance deep learning, machine learning, and AI applications. Each GPU boasts 94GB of high-bandwidth memory.
The cluster also features the Transformer Engine, which significantly accelerates AI performance and capabilities, enabling the training of large models within days or even hours. Additionally, the system is powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon scalable processors.
To optimize cooling efficiency and reduce energy consumption, the Virga cluster employs hybrid direct liquid cooling, minimizing the reliance on energy-intensive air cooling systems.
According to CSIRO, this combination of advanced hardware and cooling technology positions the Virga computing cluster as a powerful and efficient solution for cutting-edge AI and machine learning workloads.
Virga cluster boosts AI
CSIRO relocated over 50 tonnes of IT equipment in Canberra to a new purpose-built facility, enabling the construction of Virga. CSIRO claims the project has paved the way for future growth in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital science.
The H100’s combined technology innovations can speed up large language models (LLMs) by an incredible 30X over the previous generation to deliver industry-leading conversational AI.
“The installation of Virga has not only modernized our IT infrastructure but also keeps us at the forefront of accelerated computing and Australian innovation, which will deliver significant benefits to our researchers,” said Angus Macoustra, Chief Technology Officer at CSIRO.
In Australia, accelerated computing offloads specific calculations from a computer’s CPU to a co-processor, with GPUs revolutionizing this process in 2008. Nvidia, initially developing multi-core GPUs for gaming and desktop computing in 1999, enabled their programming for diverse tasks by the late 2000s.
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According to CSIRO, its computing history dates back to 1949 with Australia’s first stored-program electronic digital computer, CSIRAC, and the acquisition of its first supercomputer, the Cray Y-MP, in 1990.
Now, the Virga cluster represents the fourth generation of CSIRO’s GPU clusters, delivering performance 60 times faster than their first machine in 2009.
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Jijo Malayil Jijo is an automotive and business journalist based in India. Armed with a BA in History (Honors) from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, and a PG diploma in Journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi, he has worked for news agencies, national newspapers, and automotive magazines. In his spare time, he likes to go off-roading, engage in political discourse, travel, and teach languages.