Shaheen is the name of a series of

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

s owned and operated by

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; ') is a Private university, private research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 2009, the university provides research and graduate training programs in English ...

(KAUST),

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

. Shaheen is named after the

Peregrine Falcon The peregrine falcon (''Falco peregrinus''), also known simply as the peregrine, is a Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan bird of prey (raptor) in the family (biology), family Falconidae renowned for its speed. A large, Corvus (genus), cro ...

. The most recent model, ''Shaheen III'', is the largest and most powerful supercomputer in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

Shaheen I

The first generation of Shaheen (2009-2015) was an IBM Blue Gene/P. It was originally built at IBM's

Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. Its main laboratory is in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City. It also operates facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Albany, ...

in Yorktown Heights, New York, and moved to KAUST in mid-2009. The computer was created by Majid Alghaslan while he was working for

. The first generation of Shaheen included the following functional elements: * 16 racks of

Blue Gene Blue Gene was an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with relatively low power consumption. The project created three generations of supercomputers, Blue Gene/L, Blue ...

/P, having a peak performance of 222 Teraflops * 164 IBM

IBM System x System x is a line of x86 servers produced by IBM, and later by Lenovo, as a sub-brand of IBM's ''System'' brand, alongside IBM Power Systems, IBM System z and IBM System Storage. In addition, IBM System x was the main component of the IBM Syst ...

3550

Xeon Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...

nodes, having a peak performance of 12 Teraflops

Performance

Shaheen I's performance and computing capabilities included: *65,536 independent processing cores. *10 Gbit/s access to world's academic and research networks. The file system and Spectra Logic TFinity tape system were mounted across both the Blue Gene system and the Linux cluster. All elements of the system were connected together on a common network backbone that is accessible from all campus buildings. The systems were also accessible from the Internet.

Shaheen II

The second generation of Shaheen was brought into service in 2015. It consists of a 36-cabinet XC40 supercomputer. the computer is ranked the 97th fastest supercomputer in the world, with a Rmax of 5.54 peta

FLOPS Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measu ...

Services

The Shaheen system at KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory (KSL) is available to help KAUST users and projects, to provide training and advice, to develop and deploy applications, to provide consultation on best practices and to provide collaboration support as needed. KAUST Faculty will have access to: * General support for Shaheen facility use, including usage scheduling of Shaheen and peripheral systems *

High-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

support for "Grand Challenges" by collaboration with the Center to deliver fundamental breakthroughs in specific areas of research * Collaboration to provide

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

applications, middleware, library, algorithm support and enablement services * Applications Enablement where users can task the CDCR to develop, enable, port and scale key applications * High-performance Computing Program Best Practice Management techniques * Participation with KAUST researchers in external projects * Training on

systems management, programming, applications tuning and

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for per ...

Research topics

KAUST, using the Shaheen systems, will focus on four specific research thrusts: * Resources, energy, and environment * Biosciences and

bioengineering Biological engineering or bioengineering is the application of principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number ...

Materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

and

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

Applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

and

computational science Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science, and more specifically the Computer Sciences, which uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and s ...

Data sets for this research will be unique in that they will come from the

region, focusing on areas such as oil and gas reserves,

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

data, and other areas distinctive to KAUST.

Restrictions

Although KAUST does not support any kind of discrimination against any students or faculty based on religion, sex, or national origin, IBM and Cray have to comply with US Export regulations governing exporting high-end computing technology. As per the regulationsKAUST Conditions of Usage
from KSL's website a restriction had to be made to deny nationals of Syria, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea from access to the supercomputer.

Institutional partners

The Shaheen system at KAUST is made possible through a joint collaboration between the

Cray Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed ...

and KAUST. In addition to

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

and

, KSL has partnered with the following partner research institutions and organizations: * The Oxford Center for Collaborative Applied Mathematics (OCCAM) at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

* Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) *

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is a public research university in Sai Kung District, New Territories, Hong Kong. Founded in 1991, it was the territory's third institution to be granted university status, and the firs ...

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

Institut Français du Pétrole The IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) also known as French Institute of Petroleum (in French: ''Institut Français du Pétrole, IFP'') is a public research organisation in France founded in 1944 as Institute of Oil, Fuels and Lubricants (''Institut ...

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national university, national Public university, public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University ...

American University in Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ) is a private research university in New Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs at undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels, along with a continuing education program. ...

Technische Universität München The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

* GE Global Research * King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology *

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) is a nonprofit research university in Dhahran, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. Founded near the earliest local oil fields as the College of Petroleum & Minerals (1963) in response to the ...

Saudi Aramco Saudi Aramco ( ') or Aramco (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company that is the national oil company of Saudi Arabia. , it is the fourth- l ...

* Wipro Arabia *

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT- Kanpur or IIT-K) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. As an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), it was declared an Institute of National Importance by ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite news , title=Supercomputer Shaheen II flying full speed at KAUST , url=https://community.hpe.com/t5/Advantage-EX/Supercomputer-Shaheen-II-flying-full-speed-at-KAUST/ba-p/7096232#.YqmHwS8w3UI , access-date=15 June 2022 , work=Hewlett Packard Enterprise Community , date=24 July 2020 , language=en {{cite web , title=Shaheen II - Cray XC40, Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2.3GHz, Aries interconnect {{! TOP500 , url=https://www.top500.org/system/178515/ , website=www.top500.org , publisher=Top500 , access-date=15 June 2022 {{cite web , title=Shaheen II {{! www.hpc.kaust.edu.sa , url=https://www.hpc.kaust.edu.sa/content/shaheen-ii , website=www.hpc.kaust.edu.sa , publisher=KAUST , access-date=15 June 2022 {{cite journal , last1=Hadri , first1=B , last2=Kortas , first2=S , last3=Feki , first3=S , last4=Khurram , first4=R , last5=Newby , first5=G , title=Overview of the KAUST's Cray X40 system–Shaheen II , journal=Proceedings of the 2015 Cray User Group , date=2015 , url=https://cug.org/proceedings/cug2015_proceedings/includes/files/pap129.pdf , access-date=15 June 2022

External links

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Web site

Video of SHAHEEN I and KAUST Supercomputing Lab on Vimeo
IBM supercomputers Parallel computing Cray products Science and technology in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah University of Science and Technology