Record-breaking computing power: JUPITER ranks fourth in the global Top500 list and is Europe's fastest machine

JUPITER has secured fourth place as a newcomer on the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers and is the fastest machine in Europe. JUPITER, developed by JSC, will be the first supercomputer in Europe to break the 1 exaFLOP/s mark.

The results of the ranking were announced at the ISC High Performance in Hamburg at noon today. The newcomer is also the most energy-efficient system in the top 5 of the list.

JUPITER was developed by the JSC and built at Forschungszentrum Jülich over the past few months. Thanks to a modern Modular Data Center (MDC) designed specifically for JUPITER, construction was completed in record time. “As soon as we can use the full computing power, JUPITER will be capable of much more,” said Prof. Thomas Lippert in a short presentation during the award ceremony. The director of the JSC emphasized how unusually short the process had been since the contract was signed and how quickly the system had been set up. Only a few components are still missing. Once this is done, JUPITER will break the ExaFLOP/s mark, propelling Europe into the exascale era.

Green500: JEDI defends 1st place, JUPITER is the most energy-efficient supercomputer among the Top 5

On the Green500 list of the world's most energy-efficient supercomputers, also presented today, JEDI, the JUPITER Exascale Development Instrument, has taken 1st place for the second time in a row. The overall JUPITER system also sets new standards in energy efficiency – with more than 60 billion computing operations per watt, the system is the most efficient among the world's five most powerful supercomputers. Among all Top500 computers, JUPITER ranked 22nd on the list.

With its highly efficient hot water cooling system, JUPITER is also designed to use the waste heat generated during operation to heat buildings and will be integrated into the Jülich campus heating network.

Demanding simulations and AI training

The JUPITER booster, supplied by Eviden, is equipped with around 24,000 GH200 Grace Hopper superchips from NVIDIA. These are optimized for highly parallel applications such as AI training or demanding simulations. For 8-bit calculations with lower accuracy, such as those used for AI training, JUPITER is expected to achieve more than 40 exaFLOP/s. This will enable the largest AI models, known as large language models (LLMs), to be trained for the first time in Europe.

Thanks to its enormous computing capacity, JUPITER offers new possibilities in a wide range of application areas: For example, the spatial resolution in climate and weather simulation can be significantly increased, which will greatly improve the prediction of local extreme events. At the same time, JUPITER will support the development of a sustainable energy system – for instance, by helping to optimize power grids, simulations of energy storage materials, and the modeling of future hydrogen technologies.

JUPITER available for research and AI projects

In Jülich, the JUPITER booster and all storage systems have already been fully installed – technical acceptance is currently ungoing. Scientific users already have the opportunity to access the system before it officially goes into national and European user operation in the summer: via the JUPITER Research and Early Access Program (JUREAP) with more than 100 selected national and international applications, the GCS Exascale Pioneer Call, and the announced Gauss AI Compute Competition for AI projects.

Funding

JUPITER, “Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research”, is funded half by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and a quarter each by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF) and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW NRW) via the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS).

Contact: Benedikt von St. Vieth

Further information

Press Release of Forschungszentrum Jülich: Supercomputer JUPITER achieves record computing power in Europe