(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this Cube Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm talking next with Sanzio Bassini, the head of High Performance Computing at Cineca a Dell Technologies customer. Sanzio, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure. >> Lisa Martin: Likewise. Nice to see you. So tell us a little bit about Cineca, this is a large computing center, but a very large Italian non-profit consortium. Tell us about it. >> Yes, Cineca has been founded 50 years ago, from the university systems in Italy to support the scientific discovery and the industry innovations using the high-performance computing, and the correlated mythologies like intelligence together with the big data processing, and the simulations. We are a corsortium, which means that is a private not-for-profit organization. Currently our member of the consortium, almost all the universities in Italy and also all the national agencies. >> Lisa Martin: And I also read that you are the top 10 out of the top 500 of the world's fastest super computers. That's a pretty big accomplishment. >> Yes. That is a part of our statutory visions in the last 10 to 15 years , we have been to say, frequent buyers in the top 10. The idea is that we're enabling the scientific discovery by mean of the providing the most advanced systems, and the co-designing the the most advanced HPC systems to promote to support the accents in science. And being part of the European high-performance computing ecosystems. >> Now, talk to me about some of the challenges that Cineca is trying to solve in particular, the human brain project. Talk to us a little bit about that and how you're leveraging high-performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery. >> The human brain project is one of the flagship projects that has been co-funded by the European Commission and the participating member states that are two different, right now , flagships together with another that is just in progress, which is the the quantum of flagship we are participating indirectly together with the National Disaster Council. And we are core partners of the HPC constructors , that is the human brain project. One billion euro of investment, co-founded by the participating states and the European Commissions. it's a project that would combine both the technology issues and the designing of a high-performance computing systems that would meet the requirements of the community. And the big scientific challenges, correlated to the physiological functions of the human brains, including different related to the behavior of the, of the human brain, either from the pathological point of view either from the physiological point of view. In order to better understand the aging user, that it would impact the, the health the public health systems, some other that are correlating with what would be the support for the physiological knowledge of the human brains. And finally computational performance, the human brain is more than Exascale systems, but with a average consumption, which is very low. We are talking about some hundred of wards of energy would provide a, an extreme and computational performance. So if we put the organizing the technology high-performance computing in terms of interconnections now we're morphing the computing systems that would represent a tremendous step in order to facing the big challenges of our base and energies, personalized medicine, climate change, food for all those kinds of big social economic challenge that we are facing. >> Which reading them, besides the human brain project, there are other projects going on, such as that you mentioned. I'd like to understand how Cineca is working with Dell Technologies. You have to translate, as you mentioned a minute ago, the scientific requirements for discovery into high-performance computing requirements. Talk to me about how you've been doing that with partners like Dell Technologies. >> In our computing architectures. We had the need to address the capability to facing the big data processing involved with respect of the Human Brain Project and generally speaking that evolved with the respect of the science-driven that would provide cloud access to the systems by means of containers technologies. And the capability also to address what will be the creation of a Federation for high performance computing facility in Europe. So at the end we manage a competitive dialogue procurement the processor, that in a certain sense would share together with the different potential technology providers, what would be the visions and also the constraints with respect to the divisions including budget constraints and at the end Dell had shown the characteristics of the solution, that it will be more, let's say compliant. And at the same time, flexible with respect of the combinations of very different constraints and requirements. >> Dell Technologies has been sounds like a pretty flexible partner because you've got so many different needs and scientific needs to meet for different researchers. Talk to me about how you mentioned that this is a multi-national effort. How does Cineca serve and work with teams not only in Italy, but in other countries and from other institutes? >> The Italian commitment together with the European member states is that by mean of scientific methods and peer review process roughly speaking of the production capacity, would be shared at the European level, that it's a commitment that has been shared together with the France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. Where also of course, the Italian scientists, can apply and participate, but in a sort of emulations and the advanced competition for addressing what will be the excellence in science. The remaining 50% of our production capacity is for, for the national community and in somehow to support the Italian community to be competitive on the worldwide scenario that setting up would lead also to the agreement after the international level, with respect of some of the actions that are promoted in progress in the US and in Japan also that means the sharing options with the US researchers or Japanese researchers in an open space. >> It sounds like the human brain project, which the HPC is powering, which has been around since 2013 is really facilitating global collaboration. Talk to me about some of the results that the high-performance computing environment has helped the human brain project to achieve so far. >> The main outcomes that it will be consolidated in the next phase that will be lead by Euro SPC, which is called the phoenix that stands for Federation of a high-performance computing system in Europe. That provide open service based on two concepts One is the sharing of the ID at the European level. So it means that open the access to the Cineca system to the system in France , to UNIX system in Germany, to fifth system in Switzerland, and to the diocese the marine ocean system in Spain that is federated, ID management, others, et cetera, related to what will be the Federation of data access. The scientific community may share their data in a seamless mode, the actions is being supported by genetic, has to do with the two specific target. One is the elaborations of the data that are provided by the lens, laser, laboratory facility in Florence, that is one of the core parts of garnering the data that would come from the mouse brains, the time user for caviar. And the second part is for the meso scale studies of the cortex of the brain. In some situations they combinations of performance capability of the Federation systems for addressing what would be the simulations of the overall being of the human brain would take a lot of performance that are challenging simulation periodically that they would happen combining that they HPC facility as at European level. >> Right. So I was reading there's a case study by the way, on Cineca that Dell Technologies has published. And some of the results you talked about those at the HPC is facilitating research and results on epilepsy, spinal cord injury, brain prosthesis for the blind, as well as new insights into autism. So incredibly important work that you're doing here for the human brain project. One last question for you. What advice would you give to your peers who might be in similar situations that need to, to build and deploy and maintain high-performance computing environments? Where should they start? >> There is a continuous sharing, of knowledge, experience, best practices, where the situation is different in the sense that there are, what would we be the integration of the high-performance computing technology into their production workflow. That is the sharing of the experience in order to provide a spreads and amplifications of the opportunity for supporting the innovation. That is part of our social mission in Italy, but it's also the objective. that is supported by the European Commission. >> Excellent, that sharing and that knowledge transfer and collaboration. It seems to be absolutely fundamental and the environment that you've built, facilitates that. Sanzio, thank you so much for sharing with us, what Cineca is doing and the great research that's going on there. And across a lot of disciplines. We appreciate you joining the program today. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Likewise, for Sanzio Bassini. I'm Lisa Martin. 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