Profile of national HPC developments in Latin America - Part III

In this series of posts, we present some of the national developments in high performance computing seen in Latin American countries. Following parts I (Argentina and Brazil), and II (Chile and Colombia), today we discuss Mexico's developments.

Mexico - National Supercomputing Centers and Network

Mexico is one of countries most engaged in high performance computing in Latin America. Their commitment at a national level is visible in different ways. For instance, the Mexican Supercomputing Network (RedMexSu) interconnects seventeen supercomputing centers, universities, and research institutions in the country.  RedMexSu's activities in HPC include the development of infrastructure, services, and training. In order to promote collaboration among its member, it counts with funding to support missions for researchers from graduate level and above.

Mexico counts with two national laboratories, namely the supercomputing efforts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the National Supercomputing Center (CNS) at the San Luis Potosi Institute of Scientific Research and Technology (IPICyT). LARTop50 lists UNAM's Miztli supercomputer as the fastest supercomputer in Latin America with a theoretical peak performance of 120 TFlops. Nevertheless, access to Miztli is restricted to UNAM faculty. Meanwhile, CNS provides access to its own supercomputer, named Thubat-Kaal, to Mexican researchers and foreign collaborators. Thubat-Kaal provides 115 TFlops of performance split into 140 2xIntel Xeon nodes and 25 nodes with the same processors plus two Xeon Phi ones. This kind of access to supercomputing infrastructure is very important for the development of research in Latin America.

Finally, Mexico has already announced the development of a third national laboratory. The National Supercomputing Laboratory of the Southeast of Mexico (Laboratorio Nacional de Supercómputo del Sureste de México, or LNS), as it is named, will be held at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP). This national center is expected to help in the development of southeastern part of Mexico. For that, it will count with a supercomputer recently bought from Fujitsu, which is anticipated to provide between 100 and 200 TFlops of computing power and to include both Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia CUDA accelerators. Expect to read more about LNS as its development unfolds this year.