13th June 2022, Kajaani, Finland – The LUMI supercomputer is the first pre-exascale supercomputer of the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and is now also the most powerful supercomputer in Europe. Its inauguration ceremony took place on Monday 13th June 2022 in Kajaani, Finland. LUMI offers European researchers a world-class tool for understanding complex phenomena such as climate change and applications of artificial intelligence, while also serving as a platform for international research cooperation. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, is also involved in its construction and operation. Czech scientists thus have access to this unique supercomputer through the services provided by the e-INFRA CZ research infrastructure, of which IT4Innovations is a part.
LUMI is owned by the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, and it is run by a consortium of 10 countries with long traditions and knowledge of scientific computing. In addition to researchers from all over Europe, researchers from the Czech Republic can also apply for access to LUMI resources thanks to the involvement of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, based in Ostrava. LUMI has been set up in Kajaani, in one of the world's greenest data centres, which is hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
“Today marks a major step for Europe’s digital and green transformation. LUMI is now the fastest and most energy-efficient supercomputer in Europe, and one of the most powerful ones in the world. Thanks to its massive computing capacity, LUMI will enable scientific breakthroughs in for instance medicine and climate research at a much faster pace. It could be in the development of vaccines, diagnosis of cancer, or mitigation of the effects of climate change. This is a great example of the enormous potential of artificial intelligence to improve our lives,” says Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission.
“The societal challenges for which we use supercomputers exist on a global scale. The extent of these challenges, and the work required to tackle and transform them into innovation opportunities, requires much collaboration across many branches of academia and countless research teams. It therefore can only make sense that one of the biggest and most important research infrastructures should be based on extensive collaboration. In this, EuroHPC's LUMI consortium collaboration is a pioneering effort to strengthen European competitiveness and digital sovereignty while promoting global research collaboration,” says Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
"It is great that we have succeeded in what we and the other members of the consortium set out to do four years ago, which was to build the most powerful European supercomputer that will compete with the world's best. LUMI is a modern tool that we are also bringing to all users from the scientific communities in the Czech Republic. However, our involvement in the LUMI consortium is not just about access to its computational resources. From the very beginning, we have been actively involved in the implementation of this project as part of its management structure, providing expert support to users within LUST (LUMI user support team), developing software tools such as HyperQueue that enable users to efficiently use the available computational resources of the supercomputer. I am very pleased that we can actively participate in this historic milestone of European supercomputing," adds Vít Vondrák, Managing Director of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center.
For more information about the LUMI supercomputer, please visit https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu/lumi_supercomputer/
For photos of the LUMI supercomputer, please visit https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu/media/
