The University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) has opened a new high-performance computing (HPC) lab.

Located in FHNW’s Brugg-Windisch campus in the canton of Aargau, the facility has been designed to support students enrolled in the institution’s “AI & High Performance Computing” course.

Details about the data center housing the HPC cluster have not been provided.

However, according to the FHNW website, the HPC system includes a CPU cluster that is operated with the University of Bern’s Astronomical Institute (AIUB), combined with a "modern GPU cluster" featuring Nvidia H200 GPUs interconnected via a high-speed 400 Gbps network, and additional GPUs such as RTX A4500 and RTX 3080.

DCD has contacted FHNW for more information.

“With the opening of the HPC Lab, [students gain] something particularly valuable: direct access to a real, evolving HPC environment,” said FHNW, in a statement published in advance of the HPC lab’s opening. “They are the first students who will actively use the lab as part of their studies—whether through project work, hands-on courses, or GPU-backed interactive environments. The lab is not an abstract resource, but a place where learning and experimentation happen side by side, where students can test ideas on actual systems and experience the full stack from code to hardware.”

In a separate statement, FHNW added that the new HPC lab would form a “central learning environment” for students enrolled in the university’s “AI & High Performance Computing” course. To that end, the facility will also contain specialized software environments for the study of data analysis, simulation, machine learning, and AI applications, along with scalable storage solutions.

“In the future, more computing power will enable new inventions in the field of artificial intelligence,” said Professor Dr. Tomasz Kacprzak, the newly-appointed head of FHNW’s HPC Lab. With the laboratory, he continued, “we aim to become the central player in technology transfer in this development.”

The new HPC facilities at FHNW’s Brugg-Windisch campus will add to a tiny data center market in the canton of Aargau, with only two facilities currently managed by the operator Green and a 480MW data center planned by energy provider Flexbase.

According to its website, FHNW itself hosts just under 15,000 students across four separate campuses in Switzerland. Though student numbers have steadily risen since 2018, the university is currently operating a structural deficit of CHF 5 million ($6.32m), according to SRF.ch. FHNW has responded by cutting 40 full-time teaching positions.

Learn more about the data center market in Switzerland and the wider DACH region, and meet with other executives and experts at the DCN Zurich event later this year.