Nov. 28, 2022 — The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and CINECA has inaugurated LEONARDO, the newest EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputer ranked as the 4th fastest in the world, at the Bologna Technopole in Italy.

Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic and Anna Maria Bernini, Italian Minister of University and Research participated in the ceremony. The event was also attended by Roberto Viola, Director General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission (CNECT) and Anders Dam Jensen, the EuroHPC JU’s Executive Director.

LEONARDO’s system is based on the BullSequana XH2000 solution supplied by Atos and is specifically well suited for high-intensity computing tasks such as data processing, High Performance Data Analytics (HPDA), Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Leonardo is hosted by CINECA at the Bologna Technopole in Italy.

While the installation of Leonardo only started few months ago, the system is already ranked as the world’s 4^th fastest and most powerful supercomputer according to the November 2022 edition of the TOP500 list.  This world-leading machine will significantly increase the computing capacity available in Europe and will be a valuable tool for European research and industry supporting innovation and bringing benefits to European citizens in fields such as medicine, energy, climate, and agriculture.

Like all EuroHPC supercomputers, LEONARDO has been designed with a strong consideration for sustainability and eco-conscious supercomputing.  The machine employs a water-cooling system for improved energy efficiency and is equipped to adjust its power consumption to ensure a balance between energy saving and performance.

Anders Dam Jensen,Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, said: “I am very pleased to celebrate the inauguration of LEONARDO today, particularly after the excellent global ranking it received just a few days ago. Beyond being an incredibly powerful machine and a further step towards exascale, LEONARDO’s architecture also makes it a machine which will be particularly usable by a great number of European users and an important tool for European research and industry.”

LEONARDO is owned by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and is the result of a joint investment totalling EUR 120 million, from the JU and the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research. The Leonardo Consortium, led by Italy, is made up of six countries: Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Slovakia.

LEONARDO is already available through an early-access program. Currently LEONARDO is capable of executing more than 174 petaflops or more than 174 million billion calculations per second. It is expected to become fully operational in the first half of 2023 with an expected performance of 250 petaflops. Half of the LEONARDO computing resources will be allocated to EuroHPC users, following open periodic and peer-reviewed calls to which all eligible European users may participate.

The hosting entity for LEONARDO, CINECA (the Interuniversity Consortium for Automatic Computing in North Eastern Italy) is a non-profit consortium, made up of 70 Italian universities, 40 national institutions and the Italian Ministries of Universities and Research, and of Education.

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Source: EuroHPC JU