The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) was formed back in 2018 with the aim of building three pre-exascale and five petascale supercomputers and developing a European supercomputing ecosystem.
Progress is now underway on these supercomputers, with Slovenia’s 6.8 peak petaflops Vega system already online. According to HPCWire, two of the three pre-exascale systems — Finland’s Lumi system and Italy’s Leonardo system — are taking shape as well. Spain’s MareNostrum 5 has yet to be detailed.
Sanzio Bassini, director of CINECA’s Supercomputing Applications & Innovation Department, said that Leonardo’s 3,456-node “booster module” will deliver 240.5 Linpack petaflops, while the 1,536-node “data-centric module” will deliver 8.97 Linpack petaflops. Location of this system in the south of Europe does pose challenges for efficient cooling, but “the nodes will be ‘95 percent’ direct liquid-cooled with warm water,” Bassini said. Finalization of the system is expected in Q2 2022.
Pekka Manninen, director of the Lumi Leadership Computing Facility, provided system details along with information about the datacenter itself, which is housed in a former paper mill. “The HPE Cray EX-based system will include AMD Epyc Milan CPUs and Instinct GPUs, with its primary GPU partition (Lumi-G) delivering 550 peak petaflops,” HPCWire states. Lumi will run 100 percent on hydroelectric power, and the system’s excess heat will be used to help heat the surrounding city of Kajaani, Manninen said. Lumi is expected to begin hosting pilot use periods in September 2022.
Comments