As of: 06/15/2022 4:43 p.m
Forschungszentrum Jülich becomes the site of the first European supercomputer. “Jupiter” should break the sound barrier of a trillion arithmetic operations per second.
The supercomputers “Juwels” and “Jureca” of the Jülich Supercomputing Center (JSC) are among the most powerful supercomputers in the world. They will soon be joined by “Jupiter”. This will make Jülich the location of the first European computer that can perform more than a trillion arithmetic operations per second, as the research center in the North Rhine-Westphalian city announced today. The computing power will surpass five million modern notebooks or PCs.
From the “Petaflop” Era to the “Exascale” Era
With “Jupiter” Europe will advance into the “exascale” age of computing power. The symbolic mark of an exaflop, which is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 arithmetic operations per second, was only recently cracked. The “Frontier” supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US hit 1.1 exaflop in May.
The computing speed of computers has accelerated rapidly in recent years. In 1997, a supercomputer managed a teraflop for the first time, i.e. one trillion arithmetic operations per second. In 2008, the petaflop era began with one quadrillion arithmetic operations per second. Since then, the race for the next symbolic brand has been going on, which the Americans have now won with the “Frontier” supercomputer.
Costs of half a billion euros
The new European exascale computer “Jupiter” is intended to help solve scientific questions such as climate change, dealing with pandemics and sustainable energy production. The cost of the supercomputer is half a billion euros. Of this, 250 million come from the European supercomputing initiative EuroHPC JU and a further 250 million from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The new European supercomputer is to be installed in a purpose-built building on the Jülich campus from 2023. NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) said that the computer coming to Jülich was “an award for science and excellence overall in our state”.
A “green” supercomputer
Astrid Lambrecht, Member of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich, explained: “The decision in favor of Jülich as the location for the European exascale computer will help to further expand the research center as an outstanding location for supercomputing and an internationally visible development center for future-oriented technologies.”
A major challenge, however, is the energy requirements of “Jupiter”. The expected average power is up to 15 megawatts. The computer is designed as a “green” computer, so it should be operated entirely with green electricity and hot water cooling. Forschungszentrum Jülich also wants to recycle the waste heat, for example as district heating for heating systems.