AI processing can take a huge amount of computing power, but by the looks of this latest joint project from the Jülich Supercomputing Center and French computing provider Eviden, power will not be in short supply. The two companies have signed a deal to build a new data centre to house an exascale-class supercomputer that they say will be capable of performing one quintillion floating-point operations per second, or one exaFLOPS in HPC (high performance computing) output.
The JUPITER supercomputer (if you're wondering, the Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research, which as backronyms go is spectacular) was commissioned by Europe's supercomputer consortium, EuroHPC JU, (via ) in October 2023, and the first of will be contained in the new facility in Germany, with plans to be operational inside a year.
JUPITER will be powered by multiple Grace Hopper Superchips, will be put to work primarily on AI training and is set become the world's most powerful AI system, with a staggering when set to work on training AI models.
If construction goes ahead as planned, this will be the first exascale-class supercomputer in Europe, however the title of world's fastest supercomputer in terms of raw HPC speed is hotly contested.
: The top pre-built machines.
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The current [[link]] holder of the title is the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise , a machine capable of 1.102 exaFLOPS, though it may not stay at the top spot for much longer. is currently under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It's designed to capable of 2 exaFLOPS [[link]] when completed, which is currently estimated to be sometime in mid-2024.
Nevertheless, the figures for this new European supercomputer look impressive, and if this new modular construction approach is successful it may serve as a model for speeding up the implementation of similar projects yet to begin construction, like the proposed exascale system currently planned
As we move into a world where huge amounts of processing power become not just a nicety, but a necessity for AI development, quantum computing and more, it seems like construction techniques are beginning to advance in tandem with the power of the computers themselves.
Now, who's going to let us benchmark one? I already have some ideas…