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posted by janrinok on Friday June 17 2022, @06:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the use-the-key-unlock-the-door dept.

Europe's First Exascale Supercomputer to Unlock a Quintillion Ops:

Europe's push towards HPC (High-Performance Computing) relevancy is an ongoing effort laid out in the European Union's (EU) EuroHPC Joint Unit initiative (opens in new tab). As part of this program, the old continent has already deployed its first pre-exascale system, LUMI, which integrates the latest technology from AMD in a quantum-ready system that also boasts an awe-inspiring carbon-negative design. But LUMI is a stepping stone towards the real goal: post-exascale computing. As covered by Computerbase (opens in new tab), that honor is for the stratospheric-defiant JUPITER (Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research) supercomputer.

JUPITER will be installed in Jülich's Supercomputing Centre in Germany, with the EU setting aside a whopping €500 million (~$522 million) for infrastructure, hardware, and installation costs alone. The system, expected to be operational sometime beyond the 2024 timeframe, will be the continent's first to surpass the trillion operations per second threshold.

Unlike LUMI, JUPITER will be leveraged towards the fields of climate modeling, materials engineering, biological simulations, and sustainable energy production research while leveraging the latest AI acceleration. Unfortunately, these are all computed and memory-demanding workloads, which justify the installation's high price.

[...] One of the most impressive elements regarding JUPITER's announcement is its power consumption. While the world's top supercomputer, Frontier, reaches an average of 19 MW in power consumption, JUPITER is claimed to average out at just 15 MW - cutting 22% in power requirements within a couple of years of hardware development. And it's an almost 50% power consumption reduction compared to the former world champion in the supercomputing field, Japan's Arm-based Fugaku. Installed in 2020, its average power consumption is around 29 MW while offering "only" 537.21 PFlop/s in peak performance - half that of JUPITER. That's equivalent to a doubling in power efficiency in half a decade - an essential metric regarding environmental sustainability if we've ever seen one.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @12:08PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @12:08PM (#1253973)

    All these datacenters are full of equipment, where does it all go when the next metric scale system takes over?
    So Exa gives way to Zeta and then Yotta leading to a Jevon's Paradox?

    Or do we just throw the stuff in the trash, recycling it in some poor country where the extraction of precious metals further toxify the environment not to mention the carbon footprint the equipment made during its creation, tiny lifetime and decommission.

    Great news for human computer power, but the environment pays the ultimate price.
    And for what? Just to model what these systems and their human parasites do to the climate justified by power savings?

    Not trolling, here, looking for an answer, what is the impact of all this shit and where are we going with it to what purpose?
    Cause if you read the news, these tools are often used to further military and political goals albeit while contributing to science.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @12:55PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @12:55PM (#1253988)

    They will be used for climate modelling so you know when the next killer heat wave is coming.

    Eventually performance per watt will stop increasing and then tough decisions that were put off for decades will have to be made.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @04:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @04:00PM (#1254019)

      If I didn't have to hide behind AC I'd mod you up.
      Nice response!
      Shows someone is actually at least able to respond to the incorrect Child mod.
      It's a serious question, not a childish one in the least.