(upbeat music) >> Welcome to the CUBE Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm talking next with Sanzio Bassini, the Head of High Performance Computing at Cineca, at DELL technologies customer. Sanzio, welcome to the CUBE. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure, it's a pleasure. >> Likewise, nice to see you. So tell us a little bit about Cineca. This is a large computing center, but a very large Italian nonprofit consortium. Tell us about it. >> Yes, Cineca been founded 50 years ago, from the university systems in Italy. For a statutory mission, which is to support, the scientific discovery, and the industry innovations, using the High Performance Computing and the correlated methodologies like a, Artificial Intelligence, which is one of the, you see the more, in a, in a adopted in those days, but together with the big data processing and and simulation. Yes, we are a consortium, which means that this is a private not-for-profit organizations. Currently, our member of the consortium, almost all the universities in Italy and also all the national agencies for those selected structures. Uh. The main quarter of Cineca is in Bologna, which is in the heart Nation, with the bunch of presence in Milan, in Rome and in Naples, so we are a consultation organization. >> And I also read that you were, 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 institutional missions, the last 10 to 15 years we have been to say, frequent flyers in the top 10. There been at least two, three systems that have been ranked at the top 10. Apart, the.., whatever would be the meaning of such an advance market, there's a lot of its criticalities. We are well aware. The idea is that we're enabling the scientific discovery, by means of providing the most advanced systems and the co-designing, the most advanced HPC systems to promote and support the, what is the, excellence in science. And that being part of European high-performance computing IT system. That is the case. >> Excellent. 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. >> Um, The Human Brain Project is one of the flagship project that has been co-founded by the European commission and that the participating member states. Is not as another situations that are undertaking, it's definitely a joint collaboration between members states and the European commission. There are two different right now, flagships together with another, that is in progress, which is that the quantum of flagship, the first two flagship abroad that that has been lost. The commission for operation with the participating states has been one on the digraph vein on which also we are participating in directly together with the CNR, is the national business counselor. And the second for which we are core partners of the HPC that is, the Human Brain Project. That, that is a big flagship, one million offer, of newer investment, co-founded by the participating states and that the European commission. The project it's going to set up, in what to do be the, third strategic grant agreement that they will go over the next three years, the good, the complete that the, the whole process. Then we see what is going to happen at Africa. We thought that their would be some others progress offer these big projects. It's project that would combine both the technology issues, like the designing the off high-performance computing systems that meet the requirements of the community and the big challenge, scientific challenges correlated to the physiological functions of the human brain center, including the different farm show survey to do with the behavior of the human brain. A from the pathological point of view, from the physiological point of view, that better understand the could be the way for, for a facing that. Let's say the pathology, some of those are very much correlated with respect to aging, and 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, of the human brains. And finally that they, let me say, technological transfer stuff that represented the knowing off at the physiological, behavior of the human brain. Just to use a sort of metaphor to have happen from the point of view of there computational performance, the human brain is a, a, a, more than Exoscale systems, but with a energy consumption, which is very low, we are talking about some hundreds of Watts. So some hundreds of watts of energy, would provide a an extreme and computational performance. So if would could organized the technology of the high-performance computing in terms of interconnections now we're morphing the computing systems and exploitations of that kind of technologies, in I build a system that it might provide the computational power that would represent a tremendous and tremendous step ahead, in order to facing the big challenges of our base, like energies, personalized medicine, try not to change food for all those kinds of big socioeconomic challenges that we are facing. >> Yes I was reading that besides, sorry Sanzio I was reading that 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've 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. >> Yes, in particularly in our computing architectures, we had the need to address the capability to facing the data processing involved with backed off the Human Brain Project and general speaking that is backed off the science vendor, that would combine the capability also to provide the cloud access to the system. So by main soft containers technologies and the capability also, to address what would be the creation of a Federation. So Piper problems with people proceeded in a new world. So at the end that the requirements and the terms of reference of the would matter will decline and the terms of a system that would be capable to manage, let's say, in a holistic approach, the data processing, the cloud computing services and the opportunity before for being integrated that in a Federation of HSBC system in Europe's, and with this backed off, that kind of thing, we manage a competitive dialogue procurement processor, I think I the sentence would share together with the different potential technology providers, what would be the visuals and those are the constraints (inaudible) and those other kinds of constraints like, I don't want to say, I mean, environmental kind of constraints and uh, sharing with this back of the technology provider what would it be the vision for this solution, in a very, let's say hard, the competitive dialogue, and at the end, results in a sort of, I don't want to say Darwinian processes, okay. So I mean, the survivors in terms of the different technology providers being Dell that shown the characteristics of the solution that it will be more, let's say compliant. And at the same time are flexible with respect of the combinations of very different constraints and requirements that has been the, the process that has been the outcomes of such a process. >> I like that you mentioned that Darwinian survival of the fittest and that Dell technologies has been, it 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? >> Definitely the volume commitment that together with the, European member states is that by means of scientific merits and the peer review process, roughly speaking the arc of the production capacity, would be shared at the European level. That it's a commitment that, that there's been, that there's been a shared of that together with France, Germany, Spain, and, and with the London. So, I mean, our, half of our production capacity, it's a share of that at the European level, where also of course the Italian scientist can apply in the participates, but in a sort of offer emulations and the advanced competition for addressing what it would be the excellence in science. The remaining 50% of our production capacity is for, for the national community and, somehow to prepare and support the Italian community to be competitive on the worldwide scenario on the European and international scenario, uh that setting up would lead also to the agreement at the international level, with respect of some of the options that, that are promoted the progress in a US and in Japan also. So from this point of view, that mean that in some cases also the, access that it would come from researchers the best collaborations and the sharing options with the US researchers their or Japanese researchers in an open space. >> Open space for, 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 need the by rural SPC that is the Jared undertaking um entities, that has been created for consolidating and for progressing the high-performance computing ecosystem in Europe. It represented by the Federations of high-performance computing systems at European level, there is a, a, an option that, that has been encapsulated and the elaborated inside the human brain flagship project which is called the FEHIPCSE that stand for Federation of a High-Performance Computing System in Europe. That uh provide the open service based on the two concepts on one, one is the sharing of the Heidi at a European level, so it means that the, the high demand of the users or researchers more properly. It's unique and Universal at the European level. That didn't mean better the same, we see identity management, education management with the open, and the access to the Cineca system, to the SARS system in France, to the unique system in, uh Germany to the, Diocese system in a Switzerland, to the Morocco System in a Spain. That is the part related to what will be the federated, the ID management, the others, et cetera, related to what will be the Federation off the data access. So from the point of view, again, the scientific community, mostly the community of Human Brain Project, but that will be open at other domains and other community, make sure that data in a seamless mode after European language, from the technological point of view, or let's say from the infrastructure point of view, very strong up, from the scientific point of view, uh what they think they may not, will be the most of the options is being supported by Cineca has to do with the two specific target. One is the elaboration of the data that are provided by the lands. The laws are a laboratory facility in that Florence. That is one of the four parts, and from the bottom view of the provisions of the data that is for the scattering, the, the data that would come from the mouse brains, that are use for, for (inaudible) And then the second part is for the Mayor scale studies of the cortex of the of the human brain, and that got add-on by a couple of groups that are believing that action from a European level their group of the National Researcher Counsel the CNR, that are the two main outcome on which we are in some out reference high-performance computing facilities for supporting that kind of research. Then their is in some situations they combinations of the performance a, capability of the Federation systems for addressing what will be the simulations of the overall human brain would take a lot of performance challenge simulation with bacteria that they would happen combining that they SPC facility as at European level. >> Right! So I was reading there's a case study by the way, on Cynic that Dell technologies has published. And some of the results you talked about, those that the HPC is facilitating research and results on epilepsy, spinal cord injury, brain prostheses 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 Sanzio, 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? >> (coughs laughs) I think that at, at a certain point, that specific know how would became sort of a know how that is been, I mean, accumulated and then by some facilities and institutions around the world. There are the, the federal labs in US, the main nation model centers in Europe, the big facilities in Japan. And of course the, the big university facilities in China that are becoming, how do you say, evident and our progressively occupied increasing the space, that to say that that is somehow it, that, that, that the, those institutions would continues collaborate and sharing that there are periods I would expect off what to do, be the top level systems. Then there is a continuous sharing of uh knowledge, the experience best practices with respect off, let's say the technologies transfers towards productions and services and boosterism. Where the situation is big parenta, in the sense that, their are focused what it would be, uh the integration of the high-performance computing technology into their production workflow. And from the point of view, there is the sharing of the experience in order to provide the, a sort of, let's say, spreads and amplifications of the opportunity for supporting innovation. That is part of are solution means, in a Italy but it also, eh, er sort of um, see objective, that is addressed by the European options er supported by the European commission. I think that that sort of (inaudible) supply that in US, the, that will be coming there, sort of you see the max practice for the technology transfer to support the innovation. >> 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, it's been a pleasure, thank you very much for the opportunity. >> Likewise, for Sanzio Bassini. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this cube conversation. (calming music)

>> SiliconANGLE Media presents theCUBE! Covering the Alibaba Cloud annual conference. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier... >> Hello everyone, welcome to exclusive coverage with SiliconANGLE, Wikibon, and theCUBE here in Hangzhou, China for Alibaba Cloud's annual event here in Cloud City, the whole town is a Cloud. This is their event with developers, music festivals, and again, theCUBE coverage. Our next guest is Dhiraj Mallick, who is the Vice President of the Data Center Group, and the General Manager of Innovation, Pathfinding, and Architecture Group. That's a mouthful. Basically the CTO of the Data Center Group, trying to figure out the next big thing. >> That's right, John. >> Thanks for spending the time. >> It's my pleasure. >> We're here in China, it's-- You know in the U.S., we're looking at China, and we say okay, the fourth largest Cloud, Alibaba Cloud? >> Yes. >> Going outside of Mainland China, going global. You guys are strategic partners with them. >> Yes. >> They need a lot of compute, they need a lot of technology. Is this the path that you're finding for Intel? >> Yeah, so we've been collaborators with Alibaba for over 10 years, and we view them as a very strategic partner. They're one of the Super Seven, which is our top seven Cloud providers, and certainly in China, they're a very relevant customer for many years. We engage with them on a variety of fronts. On the technology side, we engage with them on what their key pinpoints are, what is the problems they want to be solving three to five years out, and then we co-develop, or co-architect solutions with them. >> So, I want to get your take on the event here in China, and how it relates to the global landscape, because I, it's my first time here, and I was taken back by the booth. I walked through Alibaba's booth, and obviously Jack Ma is inspirational. Steve Jobs like the culture, and artistry and science coming together, but I walked through the booth, it's almost too good to be true. They've got Quantum Computing, a Patent Wall, they've got Hybrid Cloud, they got security, they have IoT examples with The City Brain, a lot of great tech here at Alibaba Cloud. >> So I think the technologies that they're investing in are very, very impressive. Most cloud companies are probably not as far along as them, and looking at such a broad range of technologies, the Brain Project is really exciting, because it's going to be the Nexus of smart cities, both in China, as well as globally. The second thing that's very interesting is their research and investments in Quantum. While Quantum is not here today, it's certainly on the frontier, and Intel also has significant investments in sort of unpacking where Quantum will go, and what promises it offers to address. >> What I find interesting is that also hearing the positioning of, I kind of squint through the positioning, they're almost talking Cloud-native, DevOps, but they have all this goodness under the hood, and they're kind of talking IT-transitioning to Data Technology. Everything's about data to these guys, not just collecting data, using data with software. Now, that's really critical, because isn't that software-defined, data-driven is a hot trend? >> Yes, software-defined and data-driven is a very hot trend, in fact at Intel our CEO and us all believe that we've entered the data economy, and that the explosion in data is, and the thirst for analyzing that data to be able to drive smart business analytics is really the key to this digital revolution. I was reading an industry report by one of the analysts that said by 2019 there would have been over 100 billion dollars spent on business intelligence. And so, the real key is this data economy. >> The intersection of things, and even industrial internet, IIot, Industrial Iot, with artificial intelligence AI, intelligence Intel inside that word, interesting play on words-- >> Yes. >> Is coming together, and we've covered what you guys were doing on Mobile World Congress this year, where 5G was clearly an end-to-end architecture. You got FPGAs, all this goodness here going on. So that's 5G, and that's going to fuel a lot of IoT if you think of it like that way, but now AI. >> Yes. >> It's Software. How does that connect? Because that's the path we see forward on the Wikibon analyst side, we see software eating the world, but data eating software. And now you got 5G creating more data. >> Yeah, so the way we look at it at Intel is, we have data-center technologies that are fueled by the growth at the Edge by IoT devices, because they're creating demand for more processing capability to be able to unpack and analyze that information, and it's a self-fulfilling circle. We call it the virtual cycle of growth, because the data center feeds IoT demand and then IoT feeds the data center. And so it's the combination of those. What 5G does, is 5G forms the connectivity fabric between the data center and the Edge. It allows data to be pre-positioned at the correct places in the network, so that you minimize latencies through the network, and can process or do the analytics on it as quickly as you possibly can. >> So we were talking before we came on camera about Jack Ma, they call him Jackie Ma here, keynote being very inspirational, and talking moving to a new industrial era, a digital economy, all that good stuff, very, very inspirational. Let's translate that into the data center transformation, because we're seeing the data center and the Cloud with Hybrid Cloud become really critical to support what you were just talking about which is, how do you put it all together? It sounds so easy, but it really is difficult. >> It is, and so our vision is that in order to be able to fulfill this data economy, we will need to have five key innovations in the data center. The first innovation, in no particular order, is that the data center will be frictionless. And what I mean by frictionless, is that there will be zero to low latencies in order to provide that real-time experience at the Edge. So latency is extremely critical, and the way we believe that that can be achieved is by moving from copper to light. And Intel has significant investments in leadership products and silicon photonics that will enable switches to be based on photonics. It'll enable CPUs, and server hosts to be based on light. So we believe that light is a critical aspect to this success. The second aspect of frictionless is the need for liquid cooling and that was in the keynotes from Simon Hu this morning, that the liquid cooling is going to be essential to be able to enable a lot more horsepower in these data centers to be able to handle the volume of data that's coming. >> So you guys obviously with the photonics and the liquid cooling, you guys have been working on this in your labs for a long time, it's great R&D, but you need the connective tissue because with 5G you're now talking about a ubiquitous RF cloud, powering autonomous vehicles. We're seeing the Brain Project here, ET Brain, the City Brain-- >> Yes. >> Which is essentially IoT and big data being a big application that they're showcasing. What's the connective tissue? How does that work, from the data center, to the Edge? What's Intel's position? How do you see it? And what's going to unfold in front of our eyes? >> Yeah, so two things, so number one, I believe that the data center is boundary-less. It's not based on four physical walls. It's a connected link between the data center, and all the Edge devices that you called IoT. In order to fulfill this, you have to have 5G technology. We're invested in Silicon, in radio technologies, as well as in driving the 5G industry in consortia, to be able to bring 5G solutions to market. We think that 5G, as well as a tiered architecture between the Edge to the center, where you do some processing at the Edge, the radio stations, some in intermediate data centers, and then some in the back end Cloud data center, is what's going to be essential, and Intel has significant investments, both in developing this distributed hierarchical architecture, as well as in 5G. >> That's a great point. I want to just unpack that, and double-click on it a little bit, because you mentioned data at the Edge, and you also said earlier, low latency. Okay, a lot of people have been talking about, it costs you speed and time to move data around. So there's no real one general architecturing, where you have to kind of decide the architecture for the use case. >> Yes. >> So, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, whoever has the workloads or the equipment. >> Yes. >> How do you look at that, because now you're thinking about, if I don't want to move data around, maybe you shouldn't, maybe you want to move data around. How does that fit with the Cloud of model, because we're seeing Cloud being a great use case for IoT in one instance, and maybe not in another. How do you think about that? How should practitioners think about the data architecture? >> Yeah, so our vision is that the Cloud changes from a centralized Cloud, to a distributed Cloud, and is amorphoused between the Edge where the IoT devices are, and the backend, and the way to think about it perhaps, is to say that storage as people have envisioned it, as being centralized, that paradigm has to change, and storage has to become distributed, such that data is available at different points in the network, and my vision is that you don't want to move data around, you want to minimize data movement for most use cases, and you want to have it pre-positioned on the 5G network, and you want to move the compute to the data, that's more energy-efficient. >> So I got to ask you, as someone who's doing the path-finding, which is the future path for Intel, and innovation and architecture. I was talking with some practitioners recently at another event, and trying to find someone, because I don't speak Chinese very well. But they asked me the same question. It matters what's in my Cloud. And what they mean by their Cloud, either on-premise private Cloud that they're putting together, operating model of their business, now going Cloud-like. But also as they pick their Cloud provider, they want to have multi-Cloud, and so what's in their Cloud, and their Cloud provider's matters. You guys are the inside of the Cloud across many spectrums, Intel. >> Yes. >> How should a customer think about that question? What's in my Cloud? Why should it matter, and it should matter. What's your take on that, and what should they look for? >> Yeah, so my take is that for years we've had the debate of whether it's public Cloud, or private Cloud, or on-prem Cloud. Our view is that the world is Hybrid, which is why we are big supporters of Alibaba, and the Hybrid Cloud movement, and as such, if it's Hybrid, it sort of suggests that the end state is that there'll be about an equal amount of applications that run on public versus private, and so I think the number of applications have an affinity to move into the public Cloud, like mail, and then there's other applications that you might care more about the compliance and security that you would say have an affinity to being on-prem. >> Also you mentioned that there's no walls, it's boundary-less in the data center. Okay, there's no door, there's no mote, you can't put a firewall on that door, unlimited access surface area for security. Obviously security hacks are big. We found out today that Israel had hacked, and notified the NSA. Hacking is a huge problem. Equifax is going to be another one. How should customers protect themselves? >> It's a very fair question John. This is one of the side-effects of saying that the data center will be boundary-less. We now have to have security technologies that can, we've effectively expanded the attacks of security in a significant way, but I don't think the answer is to say we need to move backwards and not adopt this boundary-less Cloud. I think we want to adopt it, and we want to develop technologies. So at Intel, we are developing multiple isolation technologies that allow different VM and container tenants to be isolated from other tenants. >> And this was your point earlier, making the device more intelligent, whether that's more on-board memory, and more chips. >> Yes. >> That's what you were kind of referring to, is that right? >> That's correct. >> Okay great, so I want to get one kind of off-the-wall question, since I have you on here. It's just a brain trust here from Intel, which it's great to have him here. Distributed computing has been around for awhile, we know all about that. Network effects, distributed computing, the computer industry. But now we're seeing a trend with decentralization. Blockchain is one shining example. Russia just banned cryptocurrency. This poses a architectural challenge. What's your thoughts on the decentralization, and distributed architectures that are emerging? Opportunity is scary. How should customers think about decentralization? >> Well certainly there's a security challenge, as we just spoke, related to this. But I think the computer industry has oscillated, depending on the era and the needs between centralized and decentralized a number of times now. And we're going through an era where decentralization makes sense, because we expect 30 to 50 billion devices at the Edge, and so you can't handle that with a centralized model, primarily due to three reasons, number one, just moving that volume of data would be very expensive to do over the network. Second there'll be a number of applications that are latency-sensitive. And third, you might care about data federation, and crossing country boundaries in a number of cases. So I think for the use case that we have with IoT, we have to adopt decentralized and distributed. >> So, if The Brain is processing and data, and you've got plenty of it at Intel with more compute power, what's the central nervous system, the metadata? >> Well, actually look at the central nervous system as the 5G distributed network that enables the end-points, or the nerve endings if you will, to be connected to the spinal cord. >> Okay so a final question for you, I really appreciate you spending the time. >> Sure, it's been a pleasure. >> Intel's been a wave company in its generation, and obviously Moore's law, it's not well documented. It seems that Moore's law is every year some journalist claims Moore's law is dead, and that it never goes away, so we expect more and more innovation coming from Intel. You guys have surfed many waves. In your opinion, what waves are coming? Because it feels like the waves are big now, but a lot of people think that there's bigger waves coming. That the big wave set is coming in. What's the technology wave that you're looking at from a path-finding, innovation standpoint, that customers should look for, maybe prepare for. It could be further out coming in. What's the big wave coming in, obviously AI was seeing these things. What's your focus on that? >> So, a number of them. I think, you know distributed computing is not a solved problem yet. But certainly it needs to be solved to be able to address these end-point challenges. Another great example I think, is around visual computing. So in the past, most of the type of data that people handled, was textual. But that's moving to visual very rapidly, and there's so many examples. You brought up the City Brain Project as an example. But video and analyzing images, requires a different kind of art. Different compression techniques. If a human doesn't need to see it, you perhaps don't have to have as high a resolution, and so there's a number of ships in the assumption space. And so I think for me, visual computing is a great opportunity, as well as a wave, that's coming at us. >> And the software too. So the final question, final, final question. Alibaba here, are connecting the dots. You can see where it's going. How do you see the Cloud service provider opportunity, because obviously they're a Cloud service provider on paper, but they're big, they're a Native Cloud now, like with the big guys like Amazon, Google, Microsoft. But we're seeing an emergence of new class of Cloud service provider. Certainly our research is showing that what was a very thin neck in the power laws, now expanding into a much bigger range, where VARs and value-edited software developers are going to start doing their own Cloud-like solutions with the Native Clouds, because they need horizontally scalable data infrastructure, connective tissue, and Edge devices from Intel, but they're going to provide software expertise that's vertically specialized, whether it's traffic, IoT, or oil and gas, or financial, Fintech. The specialism of application developers combined with horizontally scalable Cloud, it seems like a renaissance in the Cloud service provider market. Do you see that as well, and how should the industry think about this potential renaissance? >> So I think there's two possibilities. One is for the vast majority of functions that people run in the public Cloud, I think one possibility is that there's a consolidation amongst a few players. But I think your point's a very good one. That they are specialized services that companies are able to provide, where they're able to carve out a niche, and become a Cloud provider for that particular set of functions, as well as there's a second reason that motivates regional Cloud providers to succeed, again, because of data federation requirements, as well as local proximal, proximity to the end-points. I think these two phenomena are likely to drive the emergence of regional Clouds, as well as specialized Clouds, like you described to perform certain functions. >> And potentially a new kind of ecosystem development. >> Yes. >> And this is, then you guys are all about ecosystems, so is Alibaba. >> That's right. >> Dhiraj, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, this is exclusive CUBE coverage with SiliconANGLE, and Wikibon here in China with Intel's booth here. Talking about AI, and the future of the data center and Cloud. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.