Towards a Quantum Leap in the Technion’s Supercomputing Capabilities

On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, the cornerstone was laid for the Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Computer Data Center. An agreement documenting the cornerstone was signed by the Rosmans, Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, and Dr. Rafi Aviram, the Technion’s Executive Vice President and Director General. The ceremony took place during the Technion’s annual Board of Governors meeting.

Signing ceremony for the Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Data Center. From left to right: Dr. Rafi Aviram, Executive Vice President and Director General of the Technion; Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan; Dr. Martin and Grace Rosman

Professor Avigdor Gal of the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, who was the master of ceremonies, said that “The Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Computer Data Center will offer students and faculty members from a range of disciplines access to some of the best supercomputing capabilities in the world. The Center will elevate the Technion to an international computing level, and the new building will give the Technion both physical security and cyber security at the highest level.”

Technion President Sivan told the audience about his meetings with the Rosmans, recounting that “all of these meetings were very special for me, since I felt an immediate bond with you and your warm and generous approach. Recently, we bestowed on you an honorary doctorate and I was very moved to see you with dozens of students from the Rosman Atidim program, who are able to devote all their time to their studies thanks to your support.”

The Technion President added that, “the need for very fast computers is growing exponentially and it is very difficult to catch up in terms of infrastructure. Thanks to you, we will have a new building that will house the finest processors in the world and will provide the Technion, our researchers and our students with the enormous computing power their R&D requires. In the name of the Technion, I thank you for your generosity and for your deep friendship.”

Cornerstone laying ceremony for the Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Data Center. From left to right: Dr. Rafi Aviram, Executive Vice President and Director General of the Technion; Dr. Martin and Grace Rosman; and Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan

In his remarks, Dr. Martin Rosman said, “The Technion’s management clarified to us that the project of highest importance for which the Technion needs our support is the High Performance Computer Data Center. Our most important mission in the last 15 years has been to support students, but we understood that the students also need this computing infrastructure, and this is what the new Center will give them and the Technion’s researchers. Thank you all – and see you at the building’s inauguration ceremony.”

Dr. Rafi Aviram, Executive Vice President and Director General, said, “computers are at the heart of technology, but people are at the heart of the Technion. Thanks to your generosity, Martin and Grace Rosman, our IT people will be able to provide optimal service and facilities to the Technion’s researchers. This is also a great opportunity to salute the Technion’s Division for Computing and Information Systems, whose staff stood at the forefront of the efforts to overcome the cyber-attack we recently experienced. I would also like to thank my predecessor, Professor Boaz Golani, who initiated the idea of establishing the Center, as well as the staff of the Technion’s Construction and Maintenance Division and our friends at the American Technion Society, the Technion friends’ association in the United States. I am full of hope that in three years’ time we will reconvene here for its inauguration.”

From left to right: Dr. Martin and Grace Rosman; Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan; and Dr. Rafi Aviram, Executive Vice President and Director General of the Technion

The establishment of the new center was also made possible through the generous support of the Zuckerman Institute, Gil and Michal Frostig, and other dedicated supporters.

According to Prof. Ofer Strichman, the Technion’s Deputy Vice President for Computing and Information Systems, “in many scientific research projects, the researchers simulate natural processes using computers; for example, the creation of a black hole or supernova, or chemical and biological systems through which the properties of various molecules are analyzed, or the possible effects of drugs. This type of computing requires large-dimension parallelism: sometimes, for a single simulation, thousands of computing cores must run continuously for several weeks. As a result, for many segments of contemporary science, scientific achievements and significant breakthroughs depend on the computing infrastructure available to the researchers. The Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Computer Data Center will offer researchers similar computing infrastructure than in the world’s leading universities, and in some regards, even superior.”