About the customer
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an intergovernmental organization with 23 member states. Located close by Geneva, its premises straddle two countries, France and Switzerland. CERN’s mission is to facilitate international cooperation in the field of high-energy particle physics, and to this end it designs, builds, and operates particle accelerators and their associated experimental areas.
Currently, more than 16000 scientific collaborators from research institutes around the world use CERN’s facilities for their experiments.
The particle accelerator complex at CERN is a sequence of machines with ever increasing energies. Each machine feeds the beam into the next, which then boosts the beam to an even higher energy. The flagship of this complex is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
LHC is the latest accelerator built on the CERN site. The LHC facility accelerates and collides beams of protons, as well as heavier ions up to lead. It is built in a tunnel 27 km in circumference about 100 m underground. The LHC design is based on superconducting double-aperture cryomagnets operating in a superfluid helium bath at 1.9 K.
CERN’s IT - Department operates computing resources at CERN’s main site in Meyrin.
CERN uses mainly x86-based server systems for physics data processing. Currently, CERN’s physics data - analysis facility includes about 10,000 servers and 380,000 compute cores, more than 485,000 terabytes of disk-based storage capacity on 96,000 drives, and about 650,000 terabytes of tape-based storage capacity.
The challenge
CERN RFP IT-4529, dated May 03, 2019, invited previously qualified suppliers and manufacturers from member states to bid on, among other things, the supply of CPU servers for physics data processing. The challenge was to provide the most cost-effective number of energy-efficient, rack-mountable systems that collectively meet the required benchmark of at least 500,000 HEP-SPEC06. Various options were also required to provide flexibility in the retrieval of the systems based on the intended use.
Our solution
bluechip SERVERline
After intensive performance and power consumption measurements, bluechip Computer AG offered a solution that included a total of 4 nodes per 19” 2U rack enclosure. Each of these nodes was equipped with two scalable Intel® Xeon® Silver processors. This made it possible not only to achieve the required benchmark values as energy-efficiently as possible, but also to map the various options for flexible expansion of the systems. A sample system provided to CERN confirmed that the strict criteria of the tender had been met. Individual BIOS and firmware settings as well as labeling according to customer specifications are also part of the standard repertoire within projects at bluechip Computer AG and were also offered as part of the tender.
In October 2019, CERN concluded a framework agreement with bluechip Computer AG for the delivery of the correspondingly offered CPU servers for the processing of physics data with a term until March 31, 2021.
Customer opinion
“Despite the difficult and unpredictable situation in 2020, bluechip Computer AG has always delivered the server systems from the framework agreement within previously agreed deadlines while maintaining all quality specifications in accordance with the contract. Direct communication in the areas of commercial, logistical and technical order processing was flawless. We are fully satisfied with the products and support provided by bluechip Computer AG throughout the entire period of our collaboration” said Eric Bonfillou, head of CERN’s IT facility planning and procurement.
