MareNostrum5: Another milestone in the EU’s supercomputing ecosystem

At the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) in Spain, the MareNostrum5 supercomputer was inaugurated on Thursday (21 December), completing the first series of eight mid-range supercomputers.

The new supercomputer was acquired by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU). Designed with a focus on promoting medical research in Europe, MareNostrum5 aims to strengthen research in the fields of drug and vaccine development, simulations of virus spread, artificial intelligence, and big data applications.

The total investment for the Barcelona-based supercomputer, including system acquisition and maintenance, encompasses more than €151 million, with half financed by the EU and the other half by a Spanish-led consortium.

“The EU concludes its first round of investments in supercomputing inaugurated in 2018, which multiplied by 14 its supercomputing capacity putting Europe back in the world map of supercomputing,” Thomas Skordas, Deputy Director-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT), told Euractiv.

To create a supercomputing ecosystem in Europe, €7 billion is to be invested in EU-based supercomputers between 2021 and 2027. Expenses up to €3 billion are borne by the EU and the member states respectively, while the remaining €1 billion is financed by private partners.

“All eight machines in the first generation of EuroHPC systems are now out in the world, and ready for access by European researchers to push the boundaries of scientific and technological innovation,” Anders Dam Jensen, executive director EuroHPC JU, told Euractiv.

The computing power of the eight acquired supercomputers amounts to 1.2 exaFLOPS, equivalent to 1.2 billion, billion (or 1.2*10^18) calculations per second that are made available for scientific communities.

“They can run hundreds of different applications that help propel scientific breakthroughs and have a profound societal impact. They help discover and develop new drugs and new materials or understand climate change and extreme weather events,” Skordas added.

To combine the ecosystem with quantum computing, EuroHPC aims to acquire the first six quantum computers that will be installed next to the hosting centres of these supercomputers.

The purpose is to combine quantum and classical supercomputing, to accelerate further the calculation time of supercomputers.

International ranking

In the ranking of the TOP500, a standardised benchmark for the performance of supercomputers, MareNostrum5 ranks third in the EU and eighth worldwide. As of last month, the supercomputer is considered the greenest in Europe, ranking sixth in global comparison.

“The EU is currently home to eight supercomputers, including three of the top ten supercomputers in the world,” Skordas explained.

Back in 2018, the EU’s supercomputing capacity totalled around 12% with 70 machines when compared to the top 500 machines. Five years later, with 14 times more computing power, Europe makes up 21% with 113 supercomputers.

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The EU’s supercomputing ecosystem

The next investment focuses on exascale supercomputers, which have more computing capacity than mid-range machines, so-called pre-exascale supercomputers. So far, the inauguration of JUPITER in Germany is planned for next year, followed by the 2025 Jules Verne in France.

Euractiv understands that the objective is to create a federated network, in which the supercomputers will be interconnected with terabit networks to be accessible from the could by the scientific community.

“This infrastructure will also soon be interconnected with high-speed connectivity networks and become accessible to public and private users across all the Union. The EU is thus building the most powerful supercomputing infrastructure in the world,“ Skordas stated.

European sovereignty is an elementary component of the EU-wide supercomputer ecosystem.

Currently, the systems are supplied by American contractors, such as HPE, Intel, IBM and Nvidia. While LUMI runs on a system provided by HPE, LEONARDO and MareNostrum5 run on Eviden, the new name of French company Atos.

“In addition to the development and operation of a needs-based number of supercomputers of different performance classes in Germany and Europe, it is also necessary to master the necessary technologies, in particular hardware and software,” a spokeswoman of the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) told Euractiv.

JUPITER, the first exascale machine in Europe, was announced to include the first European processor (central processing unit) designed by the semiconductor company SiPearl, while Jules Verne should be based by a very large part on European technologies. However, the graphic processing unit is likely to remain non-European.

“The expertise acquired by well-trained specialists is an elementary component of actively shaping digitalisation and therefore contributes to the technological sovereignty of Germany and Europe,” the spokeswoman added.

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The role of AI

Supercomputers can contribute to the development of trustworthy and ethical AI by allowing startups and SMEs to train their algorithms thanks to the computing capacity of these machines.

“In the next two years, the EU will continue its investments with two new supercomputers having exascale performance, which will also play a pivotal role in the creation and training of large foundational AI models,” Skordas added.

Only specific server infrastructures optimally support modern AI research and development, according to Björn Ommer, Computer and AI expert at the Munich-based University LMU.

“Mare Nostrum 5 explores a blend of different hardware configurations, of which some are directly suited for deep learning and generative AI,” Ommer told Euractiv.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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