NHR South-West

Important Changes On MOGON II in 2025

At the beginning of 2026, after almost 10 years, we will are aiming to put a successor system  into operation. Until then, we will continue to strive to ensure the smooth operation of the existing machines. MOGON II will have to be shut down no later than the release of a successor system. However, due to the increasing number of hard drive failures, we will have to decommission the current MOGON II file servers this summer.

There will be some changes for MOGON II users in the coming months.

Archive or move current project data - by August 2025 at the latest

All project managers are requested to archive or move their project data by August 2025 at the latest. Information on data archiving options can be found on our website. For projects running until the end of 2025, we will provide temporary storage space on the new file server.

Reapply for projects
You have three options for continuing your project.

1. For large projects (more than 6 million CPU hours), submit an application to NHR Süd-West.

  • You must submit this three months in advance.
    Example: For a project start on January 1, 2026, the application must be submitted to the JARDS application portal by October 1, 2025. Three months are necessary because two additional external reviews must be obtained.
    You can submit your application at: https://jards.nhr-verein.de
  • Select the Mainz/Frankfurt cluster in the form: NHR@Süd-West (Frankfurt, Mainz).

For more information on the application process and using NHR resources, please visit:
https://www.nhr-verein.de/rechnernutzung

2. For normal projects (1 to 6 million CPU hours), submit an application to NHR Süd-West.

  • You can submit your application at: https://jards.nhr-verein.de
    Select the Mainz/Frankfurt cluster in the form: NHR@Süd-West (Frankfurt, Mainz).
    For more information on the application process and using NHR resources, please visit:
    https://www.nhr-verein.de/rechnernutzung

3. For small projects (under 1 million CPU hours) submit an application for the MOGON KI cluster.
https://hpc.uni-mainz.de/application/

Our support

No matter what you decide, the contact persons and support will remain the same. We will advise and support you in the coming weeks and months with your potential move and the application process. We will provide assistance and answer your questions in our various support offerings:

National High Performance Computing (NHR) Alliance Launches Scientific Conference Series

The first conference will take place on September 18-19 at the Zuse Institute in Berlin. The scientific conference series with annually changing focal topics is intended to promote the exchange of scientists on HPC use. This year's inaugural NHR conference will focus on atomistic simulation, life sciences and agent-based simulation.

With top-class keynote speakers and further lectures on this year’s scientific topics, the conference will provide the basis for a scientific exchange beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Keynote Speakers

  • Mohammed AlQuraishi, Columbia University New York
  • Rob Axtell, George Mason University College of Science
  • Helmut Grubmüller, MPI, Göttingen
  • Karissa Sanbonmatsu, Los Alamos National Laboratory

By presenting your research in a talk or poster, you are invited to initiate discussions with other scientists. NHR is made for science and so you are asked to provide impetus to make NHR meet your needs. Consulting, and operator staff will participate in the program, and there will be lots of opportunities for one-on-one meetings as well as panel discussions.

Since the end of 2021 the JGU is part of the transnational consortium of the national high-performance computers (NHR) South-West. Aside from Mainz other members include the Rhineland-Palatinate technical university of Kaiserslautern-Landau, the Goethe university of Frankfurt and the university of the saarland. Throughout Germany, scientists focusing on high-energy physics, condensed matter physics and life science can use MOGON NHR South-West for their research.

New High-Performance Computer inaugurated: MOGON NHR South-West

On March 13th, the new MOGON NHR South-West was inaugurated by Clemens Hoch, the Minister of Science and Health of the federal state Rhineland-Palatinate and Prof. Dr. Müller-Stach, Vicepresident for Research and young scientist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (JGU). The association NHR South-West consists of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the Rhineland-Palatinate technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, the Goethe University of Frankfurt and the University of the Saarland and since the end of 2021 one of nine centers for national high-performance computers (NHR) in Germany. Besides representatives of the JGU, guests from the three parter universities were also present.

The new HPC-System MOGON NHR South-West located in Mainz, expands the computing capacity of the transnational consortium and is available to research groups from all over Germany. For the new set up of the cluster the NHR South-West received 7.5 million euros from the federal-country-funding "national high-performance computer". With the financial resources an efficient System could be built in Mainz. Carsten Allendörfer, technical director of the Data Center (ZDV) was responsible for the set up togehter with the HPC-group of he ZDV. "After MOGON I and MOGON II we are happy to provide a cluster that scientists throughout Germany can use with the focus on high-energy physics, condensed matter physics and life science."

 

Markus Tacke, technical director of the HPC-Group, adds: "The nwe MOGON NHR South-West consits of 590 computing nodes, 75.000 CPU-cores and a main memory of 186 TB. Per nodes two AMD-processer are available (AMD EPYC 7713), per processor each time 64 cores."

MOGON NHR South-West | HPC-cluster-specification

590 COMPUTING NODES
75.000 CPU-CORES
40 A100 TENSOR CORE GPUS
186 TB RAM
8.000 TB FILESERVER
100 BG/s INFINIBAND-NETWORK
2.8 PFLOPS MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE

AMD EPYC 7713 processor

64 CORES
2 GHZ FREQUENZY
256 MB L3 CACHE
2 PER NODES

 
Learn More

NHR South-West at JGU
Compelete Press Release Ministry of Science and Health (german only)
Website NHR South-West 
Website HPC-Team of the ZDV 

 

Half-time in cluster set up for National High-Performance Computing (NHR)

With the inclusion of the NHR South-West in the National High-Performance Computing, the preparations for the installation of the new cluster at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) also started. The working group for High-Performance Computing (HPC) at the Data Center (ZDV) has been working intensively on the conception and planning for the past few months, ordered the required hardware and had parts of the central server room converted for the cluster.

Preparation is everything

The future cooling of the cluster was initially the focus of the construction measures. The existing piping in the raised floor had to be extended so that the planned Direct Liquid Cooling system could dissipate the waste heat from the computing nodes in the future. Side coolers, which are located between the server racks, dissipate the heat from the remaining hardware using air circulation. The server racks and side coolers were delivered at the beginning of August and installed on site by our colleagues.

 

Also mounted and ready for use are the power distribution units that provide power to the hardware in the server racks. Furthermore, the various networks must be prepared for the upcoming deployment of the cluster. The HPC staff was able to lay the first foundations with the help of the ZDV network group by installing the switches of the management network and the first parts of the HDR-Infiniband network. The use of HDR-Infiniband, a special network interface standard, offers above all a very high transmission rate.

Outlook

Further hardware deliveries are scheduled by the end of the year: Components for the Direct Liquid Cooling system and the computing nodes themselves. As soon as the cluster is ready for operation, it will be available to researchers throughout Germany via the NHR South-West. Main topics in Mainz are: High Energy Physics, Condensed Matter Physics and Life Science.

About the NHR South-West

The NHR South-West is a cross-national consortium that includes JGU, the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Goethe University Frankfurt and Saarland University. The goal is to benefit mutually from methodological expertise and computing capacity that is being developed.

Researchers from the four universities of NHR South-West can network more closely with other high-performance computing centers within the alliance and develop their technical and methodological competencies in High-performance computing in a targeted and coordinated manner. In this way, the advantages of High-performance computing can be made available to research and science in the long term.

In October 2021, the joint science conference of the federal and state governments decided to include JGU in the National Supercomputing Alliance.