May 22, 2023 — EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s LUMI supercomputer reached the third spot on the new Top500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers released at the ISC23 conference in Hamburg, Germany, on May 22, 2023. LUMI reached a measured High-Performance Linpack (HPL) performance of 309 petaflops on this biannual list. This makes LUMI the fastest supercomputer in Europe.

LUMI was generally available for users across Europe in its full capacity since December 2022, and its computing capacity has already been exploited in various research projects which are progressing science in the domains covered. LUMI is powering, e.g., two major digital twins: the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin and the Biodiversity Digital Twin, and used by research teams across Europe requiring unforeseen computational capacity to advance science.

“During the recent years we have been building the capability of LUMI to match the expectations and now it is time to prove the concept works. Already today we have been able to address major computational challenges with a new level of performance and expanding this success even further is our target,” said Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland, on behalf of the LUMI consortium.

LUMI is a unique endeavor thanks to its scale, sustainability and pan-European nature, hosted by a consortium of ten countries.

“LUMI remains the fastest system in the EuroHPC fleet of supercomputers. Its 3rd place position in the rankings of the most powerful computers in the world is a big achievement for EuroHPC JU and for the European HPC community. With help from our colleagues at CSC and in the LUMI consortium, we are delivering on our promise to place Europe in a leading position in supercomputing. LUMI, a true European collaboration, is boosting research and innovation potential and by extension, improving the lives of all European citizens,” said Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.

One of the Greenest

LUMI supercomputer reached the seventh spot on the new Green500 list which biannually ranks supercomputers from the Top500 list in terms of energy efficiency. The GFlops/Watts ratio for LUMI is 51.38, making it one of the greenest supercomputers in the world.

On top of this, the LUMI data center was also recognized in the 2023 Data Centre World Awards for the Green Data Centre of the Year in March 2023.

“The green transition is a major focus area for LUMI: the low carbon footprint of LUMI is one outcome of it. As pioneers of sustainable HPC, we do recognize our responsibility for our environmental development, and will target to build increasingly green and energy efficient solutions for the HPC and data center services,” Koski from CSC continued.

CSC’s data center in Kajaani, Finland, where LUMI is placed, is one of the world’s most eco-efficient data centers. LUMI uses 100% carbon-free hydroelectric energy for its operations, and its waste heat can be reused to heat up the surrounding houses in city of Kajaani. Thanks to the cool climate of the region very little energy is needed to keep the supercomputer cool. Thus, LUMI’s energy-efficiency is in a league of its own.

Complementary Lists

On the new HPCG list (High-Performance Conjugate Gradient) LUMI was ranked number three. The HPCG benchmark provides an alternative metric for assessing supercomputer performance and is meant to complement the HPL measurement.

In addition, LUMI was listed in the HPL-MxP benchmark as number two with its 2.168 exaflops performance. The HPL-MxP benchmark probes the emerging convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, which was one of the design goals of LUMI.

The LUMI system is supplied by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), based on an HPE Cray EX supercomputer.

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Source: CSC – IT Center for Science