The Atos-built, Nvidia SuperPod-based Berzelius supercomputer – housed in and operated by Sweden’s Linköping-based National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) – is already no slouch. But now, Nvidia and NSC have announced plans to add dozens more nodes, bringing the system close to 100 nodes and over 750 GPUs. Berzelius, aimed at AI applications, has already been applied to tasks like cancer treatment and materials science.

Installed in spring 2021, Berzelius, as it stands, is an Nvidia SuperPod consisting of 60 DGX A100 nodes. Each node, in turn, carries eight A100 (40GB) GPUs, dual AMD Epyc “Rome” CPUs, 1TB of memory and 15TB of local NVMe storage. This version of Berzelius delivers 5.25 Linpack petaflops and placed 110th on the most recent Top500 list.

The new addition will bring 34 additional nodes to the SuperPod, also based on the DGX A100 structure; this time, though, the A100s in the systems will be the 80GB variants rather than the 40GB GPUs in the remainder of the system. In total, now: 94 nodes and 952 A100s (an increase of 272). A linear extrapolation based on the current system would place it somewhere around 8.2 Linpack petaflops, but for now, NSC is saying that it delivers “as much as 470 petaflops for AI calculations.” The system is also expanding its storage to include a total of 1.5PB of NVMe storage.

“I’ve been asking for large-scale GPU resources long before Berzelius came,” said Michael Felsberg, a professor of computer vision at Linköping University. “Our research was severely limited because we were unable to run the experiments we needed. It could be said that Berzelius is our electron microscope – some experiments cannot be carried out without it.”

The upgraded system will also use Nvidia Quantum 200Gb/s InfiniBand networking. “What Berzelius is very good at is having many GPUs work at the same time on the same problem. This requires extremely fast networks inside the computer, and Berzelius has these,” said Anders Ynnerman, a professor at Linköping University (pictured in front of Berzelius in the header, image courtesy of the university).

Berzelius was made possible by a gift from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation of SEK 300 million (roughly $29.2 million USD). That donation also enabled WASP, which NSC describes as “Sweden’s largest ever research initiative” and which supports basic research, education and recruitment in areas like AI and software development. WASP is led by Ynnerman.

“A machine like Berzelius is fundamental not only for the results it delivers, but the way it catalyzes expertise in Sweden,” Ynnerman said. “We’re a knowledge-driven nation, so our researchers and companies need access to the latest technology to compete.”