Düsseldorf and Tokyo, June 10, 2019 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and NEC Deutschland GmbH today announced that RWTH Aachen University – one of the leading technical universities in Germany – has started operations of the new High Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster solution, CLAIX-2018, which has been delivered by NEC. CLAIX-2018 has been installed at the IT Center of RWTH Aachen University and extends the already existing CLAIX-2016 installation.

The heart of CLAIX-2018 ("Cluster Aix-la-Chapelle") comprises approximately 1,032 compute nodes, each equipped with two Intel Xeon Platinum 8160 CPUs, containing 24 cores at a nominal clock frequency of 2.1 GHz (turbo mode up to 3.7 GHz), and 192 GB of RAM. In addition, 48 of these nodes are equipped with two NVIDIA Volta V100 GPUs, interconnected by the high-bandwidth, low-latency NVLink technology. These nodes support the acceleration of specially optimized applications for data analysis. All nodes of CLAIX-2018 are connected by an Intel Omni-Path 100G network fabric. With CLAIX-2018, a completely new high-performing Lustre-based HPC storage solution will also be put into operations, providing a usable capacity of 10 Petabyte and a read/write bandwidth of 150 GB/s.

For the simulation applications from the RWTH job mix, CLAIX-2018 provides an average performance increase of 30% per core for the same data input sets in comparison to the previously installed system and delivers a theoretical peak performance of 3.55 Petaflops (3.55 million billion floating point operations per second). The indirect liquid cooling of the complete solution is implemented by side-coolers, assisted by a free-air cooling component.

"From all the candidates, NEC had made the most attractive and convincing proposal. Our decision process involved a job mix of various applications for simulation, and the NEC solution design demonstrated an excellent price-performance ratio with regards to the total cost of ownership, energy and cooling efficiency, as well as the total performance," said Professor Dr. Matthias Müller, director of the IT Center and responsible for High Performance Computing at RWTH Aachen University.

"We are very proud that we could deliver and implement this very innovative HPC cluster solution to RWTH Aachen University. RWTH Aachen is one of the most renowned universities in Germany, and this project is a lighthouse project not only for the HPC datacentre, but also for NEC," said Yuichi Kojima, Vice President HPC EMEA at NEC Deutschland.

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About RWTH Aachen University
With its 260 institutes in nine faculties, RWTH Aachen University is among the leading European scientific and research institutions. Its graduates are sought-after as junior executives and leaders in business and industry.

National rankings and international assessments like Times Higher Education World University Rankings attest to the RWTH graduates' marked ability to handle complex tasks, to solve problems constructively in team work and to take on leadership roles. The University's innovative capacity is reflected in the high number of business start-ups (currently more than 1,400).

About NEC Deutschland GmbH
NEC Deutschland GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Europe Ltd. and is a leading provider of HPC solutions, focusing on sustained performance for real-life scientific and engineering applications. To achieve this goal NEC delivers technology and professional services to industry and academia. Linux-based HPC clusters as well as our high-end vector systems meet the different needs of different customers in the most flexible way. Energy-efficiency is one of the key design objectives, addressed by advanced cooling technologies or by the high-bandwidth vector-architecture, which delivers unprecedented efficiency on real world code. The service capabilities from the operation of complex systems to the optimization of scientific codes and NEC's storage-appliances complete our solution offering.

About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. The NEC Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.

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