Introduction to Dunamis

Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), Islamabad, is recognized as a preeminent federal public university devoted to higher education in specific disciplines of engineering, natural sciences and formal sciences. Although PIEAS offers BS, MS, MPhil and PhD degree programs, yet the postgraduate degree programs dominate. In addition to the degree programs, PIEAS also offers specialized short courses to engineers, scientists and other professionals for their continuing professional development. PIEAS highly qualified faculty matched with excellent infrastructure are instrumental in its endeavor to offer high quality education in the disciplines of engineering and applied sciences, fulfill national and regional requirements for highly qualified professionals and contribute to the welfare of humanity through education, research and development.

In today’s engineering science domains, HPC-based solutions are becoming more and more popular. HPC platform is required to support parallel computing of the finite element method which is widely used in numerical simulation. Numerical simulation involves complex computing models and large computing volume. However, PIEAS’ single-server system cannot meet the simulation computing requirements and restrains research progress. Therefore, the HPC platform has to be built to meet the increasing computing requirements and support the routine scientific research and teaching activities.

Although other universities in Pakistan have HPC platforms, the utilization rate of platform resources is low and resource sharing is not supported. Finding an easiest and most economical way to use the HPC platform is a top concern of PIEAS. The data center for the high-performance computing cluster was established from PIEAS own resources.

The initiative for building HPC at PIEAS was taken in late 2015. The grant proposal for setting up 20TFLOPS was submitted to HEC. The proposal was defended and after a series of meeting, a grant was released for the technical setup. The deployment was completed in January 2020.

Mission and Objectives

The mission of this facility is to provide enabling faculty and researchers with high-end cyber-infrastructure for their research initiatives geared towards the socio-economic uplift of Pakistan. The facility aspires to wants to become an accomplished and preferred partner for high-performance computing solutions.