The New Dimension of Computing

With more than a quintillion floating-point operations per second, Jülich’s latest supercomputer enables groundbreaking insights into the major topics of the future

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Whether it be the digital transformation, climate protection, the energy transition, or the development of a sustainable circular economy, it takes a great deal of computing power to solve many of the big issues facing humanity. JUPITER will provide a huge boost for research in these areas – for the development and use of artificial intelligence, as well as for simulations and data analysis.

Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht, Chair of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich

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JUPITER – Paving the way to the exascale era

JUPITER, the first European exascale supercomputer, is set to be launched at Forschungszentrum Jülich. “Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research”, or JUPITER for short, is the first system in Europe with a computing power of more than one quintillion floating-point operations per second. JUPITER is set to achieve the performance of one exaflop/s with double the precision (64 bits) typically required for scientific simulations. For the training of AI models, JUPITER is expected to achieve over 70 exaflop/s for calculations with lower accuracy (8 bits). This would make JUPITER one of the fastest computers for AI in the world.

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How JUPITER is used: Examples of applications

Artificial intelligence on the supercomputer

Chelsea Maria John requires the computing power of JUPITER to develop open-source language models.

Brain cells simulated in the electronic brain

Thorsten Hater wants to use the exascale computer to simulate processes in the human brain more realistically.

From weather forecasting to climate simulation

Sabine Grießbach wants to use JUPITER to create detailed climate forecasts.

Quantum computer simulated on a supercomputer

Dennis Willsch will use the supercomputer to investigate the world of quanta and simulate universal quantum computers.

Hydrogen turbines and wind farms

Mathis Bode can calculate complex flow phenomena faster and more accurately with JUPITER. This is relevant for many areas of energy supply.

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JUPITER in numbers

JUPITER – The New Dimension of Computing

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Modular design

JUPITER is being installed in a high-performance modular data centre. It consists of around 50 container modules on an area of over 2,300 square meters. This concept offers several advantages: planning and assembly times are significantly shorter, and construction and operating costs are noticeably lower. The infrastructure can also be flexibly adapted for new generations of computers and offers optimized solutions for power supply, cooling, and recycling.

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JUPITER is a dynamic modular supercomputer with two parts: a highly scalable booster module for particularly compute-intensive problems, which is massively supported by GPUs, and a cluster module that can be used very universally for all kinds of tasks, especially for complex, data-intensive tasks. Both modules can solve scientific problems separately or together, depending on what is required.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Lippert, director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich

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From vector processor to exascale: Milestones on the path to JUPITER

CRAY X-MP

Giga, tera, peta, exa – almost every ten years, the computing power of supercomputers increases a thousandfold. CRAY X-MP achieves 0.32 gigaflop/s.

JUGENE

With 1 petaflop/s, JUGENE achieves the computing power of 1,000 modern smartphones.

JUQUEEN

The IBM Blue Gene/Q computer, which is installed at Forschungszentrum Jülich under the name JUQUEEN, achieves a performance of 5.8 petaflop/s.

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Who can use JUPITER?

As with all supercomputers, researchers who want to use JUPITER must apply for the limited computing time to work on their projects. Projects from Jülich also undergo a strict selection process here. In 2024, around 100 projects, many of them involving Jülich, submitted applications as part of the JUPITER Research and Early Access Program (JUREAP). This enabled around 30 applications to be launched. Further calls for participation for computation time are pending. The Jülich Supercomputing Centre operates JUPITER as a member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing – an association of the three national supercomputing centres in Germany.

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Last Modified: 14.02.2025