CSIRO awards science cluster project to Dell

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has selected Dell as the vendor to replace its ageing Bracewell cluster.

Bracewell replacement draws near
CSIRO

Last November, the CSIRO launched a $14.5 million tender for the project.

At the time, it explained, the new Advanced Scientific Accelerator Cluster (ASAC) would need to support machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads, as well as fulfilling a more traditional high-performance computing (HPC) role.

The ASAC’s bill has come in higher than the original tender budget, with the July 21 contract notice stating the new cluster will cost nearly $16.3 million.

A CSIRO spokesperson told iTnews its new machine will feature hybrid direct liquid cooling technology.

The system is to be installed in 14 of the agency’s racks in the Canberra Data Centres facility starting September, and is due to be available to researchers in December 2023.

The system will also have a high-performance interconnect, out-of-band management for all system nodes, cluster management and monitoring tools and what the original tender request called a “comprehensive application development environment”.