Hungary’s Government Information Technology Development Agency (KIFÜ) has inaugurated the country’s most powerful supercomputer yet: Komondor, named for a wonderfully mop-like Hungarian dog breed. The system weighs in at an aggregate just over 5 Linpack petaflops.

Komondor (pictured in the header, courtesy of KIFÜ), an HPE-built system, consists of four modules. First, the 50-node GPU module, which has one AMD Epyc “Milan” 7763 CPU and quadruple Nvidia A100 GPUs (plus 256GB of memory) on each node – this module is estimated at 4 Linpack petaflops. The CPU-only module has 140 nodes, each with dual Epyc CPUs and 256GB of memory – this module is estimated at 0.7 Linpack petaflops. Then there are two smaller specialist modules: one dual-node module for AI, with the same CPUs, but twice the memory and GPUs; and one single-node data analytics module with 12 Intel Xeon Gold 6254 CPUs and 9TB of memory (these latter two modules, respectively, add 0.3 Linpack petaflops and 21 teraflops to the system’s aggregate power). The system is networked with HPE Slingshot 11 and supported by nearly 12PB of storage.

Some preliminary version of the system – presumably its GPU module – has been benchmarking on the Top500 over the past year, most recently coming in 199th with 3.09 Linpack petaflops, but KIFÜ says that installation and testing of the system began in September of last year at KIFÜ Debrecen University. KIFÜ says that the system requires 300kW of power and is “particularly environmentally friendly” thanks to hot-water and passive cooling. The system’s waste heat is reused to heat the city swimming pool. Waste heat reuse has become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the colder climates and in Europe, where energy prices are dramatically increasing.

“The result of a development process of more than two years is that today, we can hand over Komondor to users,” said KIFÜ president Endre Spaller (in translation), marking the inauguration of the system. “With this computer – which also has outstanding performance at the regional level – we can carry out in-depth research such as speech and face recognition, climate research, telecommunications, traffic management, energy, production optimization, pharmaceutical research, or precision medicine. Traditional computers are not suitable for these.”

“The HPC development in Debrecen is the largest domestic IT development of the decade, the results of which the city will also be able to enjoy,” said László Papp, mayor of Debrecen (in translation). “In Debrecen, everything is there for talented university students and researchers to perform their calculations.”