Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has been awarded a contract of more than $160 million by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) to build one of the world’s fastest supercomputers that will be based in Finland. The new supercomputer, which EuroHPC JU refers to as “LUMI,” will help European researchers and private and public organizations significantly advance R&D and drive innovation in areas such as healthcare, weather forecasting, and AI-enabled products.
EuroHPC JU’s LUMI is characterized as a “pre-exascale” system that will have a theoretical peak performance of more than 550 petaflops, which is equivalent to the performance of 1.5 million laptops combined.
Additionally, through its collaboration with EuroHPC JU, HPE is expanding supercomputing resources to accelerate the European roadmap to achieve exascale computing, which is the next significant leap in supercomputing that will deliver 5-10 times faster performance than today’s systems.
“We are honored to be selected for LUMI and leverage our exascale era technologies to build one of the fastest supercomputers on the planet,” said Peter Ungaro, senior vice president and general manager, High Performance Computing (HPC) and Mission Critical Solutions (MCS), HPE. “We are committed to supporting the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) to seize opportunities in next-generation supercomputing to bolster research in science, advance innovation and unlock economic growth. We are excited to collaborate with the EuroHPC JU, and through our partnership with AMD, leverage our unique capabilities in compute, high performance networking, storage and software to help improve the way people live and work.”
HPE Powers One of The World’s Fastest Pre-Exascale Supercomputers for Europe
The EuroHPC JU’s LUMI will be powered by HPE Cray EX supercomputers featuring next-generation AMD EPYC™ CPUs and AMD™ Instinct GPUs to deliver unprecedented performance and targeted deep learning capabilities to advance the combination of modeling, simulation, analytics and AI workloads to solve complex research.
EuroHPC JU’s LUMI will be hosted in CSC – IT Center for Science in Kajaani, Finland and will be shared by ten European countries as part of the newly formed LUMI consortium. The consortium includes Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The new system will be available in mid-2021.
“Once operational in mid-2021, the LUMI supercomputer will be one of the most competitive and green supercomputers in the world!” said Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director, EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. “Such leadership-class system will support European researchers, industry and public sector, in better understanding and responding to complex challenges and transforming them into innovation opportunities in sectors like health, weather forecasting or urban and rural planning.”
“AMD is proud to join with HPE to power the upcoming LUMI supercomputer to advance scientific research in artificial intelligence, weather forecasting, pharmaceutical discovery, and more,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, data center and embedded systems group, AMD. “Our next-generation AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs, coupled with HPE’s unique supercomputing technologies, are fueling new capabilities in high performance computing, and we are excited to strengthen the European research community through our support.”
HPE Accelerates Europe’s Path to Achieving Exascale Computing
HPE is delivering powerful supercomputing and AI technologies to advance EuroHPC JU’s mission in adopting next-generation supercomputing, which includes pre-exascale and exascale systems. EuroHPC JU’s LUMI is the second system that was contracted to HPE to build, following the Euro_I4TI system for IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava that will be the Czech Republic’s most powerful supercomputer.
HPE will also expand its supercomputing supply chain in Europe by manufacturing liquid-cooled HPE Cray EX supercomputers and HPE Apollo systems in its Kutná Hora factory in the Czech Republic. Additionally, HPE will also establish a Center of Excellence in Europe that will provide R&D tools and expertise to develop and test applications, programming, processors and other solutions required to build an exascale readiness program.
Through the investment of these systems and technologies, EuroHPC JU aims to bolster R&D and innovation to advance science, boost industrial competitiveness, and secure Europe’s technological sovereignty.
HPE Powers EuroHPC JU’s LUMI with End-to-End Supercomputing and AI Solutions
EuroHPC JU’s LUMI will be built using HPE Cray EX supercomputers, which will also be used in the three upcoming exascale systems for the U.S. Department of Energy: Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory, Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The HPE Cray EX supercomputers will integrate the following compute, storage, networking and cooling technologies that are purpose-built for the Exascale Era, to power LUMI: