HPE will build an Nvidia-powered supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) in Germany.
Dubbed Blue Lion, the system will employ 100 percent direct liquid cooling. The water-cooling solution will allow waste heat from the supercomputer to be reused for heating local buildings.
Built using HPE Cray technology, the system will consist of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and is expected to have 30x the performance of SuperMUC-NG, the current LRZ HPC system machine. This will give Blue Lion an anticipated compute power of more than 800 petaflops of peak AI performance.
The system will also deploy the HPE Slingshot high-performance interconnect, capable of transferring 400Gbps, with HPE further noting that Blue Lion will require less space because server cabinets can be packed much more densely.
LRZ will also use HPE Performance Cluster Management software to monitor the system.
“Procuring a new supercomputer takes work, but it’s incredibly exciting,” said Professor Dieter Kranzlmüller, head of LRZ. “We can already take a look into the future of supercomputing. This increases the anticipation and even more the excitement of how the scientific community will use this system to make even better progress into new realms of knowledge. After all, it’s not about having the fastest supercomputer, but about providing the best possible support for cutting-edge research with our high-performance infrastructure.”
The system cost a total of €250 million ($262m) and was jointly funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts (StMWK). It is expected to be operational in 2027.
GW4 consortium launches Isambard 3
The universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, and Exeter – a consortium known as GW4 – have launched the jointly developed Isambard 3 supercomputer.
The £10 million ($12.67m) machine has been deployed in partnership with HPE, Nvidia, and Arm and contains a new Nvidia Grace CPU Superchip.
Housed in a self-cooled, self-contained HPE Performance Optimized Data Center (POD) at the National Composites Centre on the Bristol and Bath Science Park, the site is also home to Isambard-AI, a £225 million ($285m) AI research system that is expected to become the UK’s most powerful supercomputer.
UAE telco Du deploys first Nvidia high-performance cloud computing system in GCC
The first high-performance cloud computing system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has been launched.
Built in partnership between UAE telco Du and AIHub Cloud Services, the system is equipped with Nvidia GPUs and is located in the Dubai Silicon Oasis area.
“Our collaboration with Du to host the Nvidia-powered Supercluster in Dubai Silicon Oasis represents a pivotal step in the field of AI technologies and data center capabilities in the GCC,” said Mohammed Taha, general manager of AIHostingHub.
iGenius partners with Nvidia for Italian supercomputer
Italian startup iGenius is set to build a data center in southern Italy to house 80 Nvidia GB200 NVL72s.
Dubbed Colosseum, the supercomputer is expected to deliver 115 exaflops of computer power and will be used to build advanced AI applications. The startup said customers will be able to deploy the models and Nvidia NIM microservices it is planning to offer as fully managed applications, including cloud-based or on-premises.
According to iGenius, the system will be powered by renewable energy sourced from Italy.
University of Hamburg brings Hummel-2 supercomputer online
The University of Hamburg has deployed a new HPC system, known as Hummel-2, at its regional computing center.
The system cost €4.4 million ($4.6m) and consists of 178 computing nodes, each with 192 computing cores, and 5.2 petabytes of storage. Hummel-2 will be used for research and complex simulation calculations, including in the fields of astrophysics, chemistry, physics, and computer science.
Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg launches Julia 2
A €4 million ($4.2m) supercomputer has been deployed in the former kitchen of a Würzburg-based middle school.
Financed by Hightech Agenda Bavaria and the German Research Foundation (DFG), Julia 2 consists of 160 Nvidia GPUs, housed in eight water-cooled Vertiv racks, and 1.8 petabytes of hard disk storage. The system will be managed by the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg.
amplitUDE supercomputer at University of Duisburg-Essen becomes operational
The University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) has launched the amplitUDE at its Duisburg-Wedau data center.
Described as one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world – it ranked eighth on the most recent edition of the Green500 list – the HPC system is available to UDE researchers for simulations in the natural and engineering sciences, the analysis of medical data or the development of LLMs.
UDE plans to use the machine’s direct hot water cooling system to redirect waste heat into the surrounding district heating network.
Hong Kong Cyberport opens AI Supercomputing Centre
Hong Kong’s first AI Supercomputing Centre (ASIC) has been opened by Cyberport. The company has also launched an AI Lab which will be coupled with the supercomputing center.
In a statement, Cyberport said ASIC will provide “advanced computing capabilities to promote industry development,” bringing together “talents specializing in computing power, data and algorithm technology.”
In its first phase, the facility will provide 1,300 petaflops, increasing to 3,000 petaflops in 2025.
The supercomputing center and AI Lab will help to promote the development of AI in Hong Kong, with the HKSAR Government set to allocate HK$3 billion from the 2024-2025 budget to Cyberport for the implementation of a three-year AI Subsidy Scheme.
CERN to open new Saudi data center
Particle physics research center CERN has collaborated with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to open a data center in Saudi Arabia.
According to Martin Gastal, CERN adviser to the Middle East and North African region, the project will help to fulfill the aims of the Research, Development, and Innovation Authority in Saudi Arabia, which wants to bring together more particle physicists in the Kingdom to improve research efficiency.
The collaboration builds on an existing partnership between the two institutions that has already seen four KAUST students undertake internships at CERN. The Swiss research center has also collaborated with a number of other countries in the region, including Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman.