Global Standing of EuroHPC Supercomputers: Three Systems in the Top 10 and Two New Entries

The latest editions of the TOP500 and Green500 lists were released on Monday 13th May 2024 on the first day of the ISC High Performance Conference being held this week in Hamburg, Germany.  

The TOP500 list ranks the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers according to their performance on the LINPACK Benchmark. Once again, all operational EuroHPC supercomputers have been ranked on the list and have placed within the top 226 supercomputers worldwide.  

The EuroHPC JU strives to procure green supercomputers, with many of its supercomputers ranking highly on the Green500 list, which ranks the 500 most powerful supercomputers according to energy-efficiency. JUPITER has made its first appearance in the rankings, with a first module named JEDI (JUPITER Exascale Development Instrument) taking first place in the Green 500 list.  

The TOP500 and the Green500 lists are published twice a year and serve as essential benchmarks in the supercomputing community. 

European HPC at the top

The three EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputers remain ranked among the top 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world.  

LUMI remains the most powerful supercomputer in Europe with a measured High Performance Linpack (HPL) of 379.7 petaflops, achieving 5th place on the TOP500 list. LUMI has also ranked at 2nd place in the HPL-MxP benchmark, which tests for the system’s ability to converge HPC workloads with Artificial Intelligence tasks, meaning that LUMI is one of the leading systems in the world for AI.  

LUMI’s water-cooling technology and efficient use of its waste-heat for local district heating mean it remains a highly green supercomputer and the greenest in Europe, with a Green500 ranking of 12th place. 

Leonardo follows, measuring at 241,2 petaflops and reaching 7th place in the global rankings. In 2024, Leonardo is set to receive an upgrade that will introduce a new partition, further expanding its capacity and capabilities, serving as an invaluable resource for the European scientific community. 

MareNostrum 5 placed in 8th position on the list, following its first appearance in the November 2023 edition of the biannual list. Since its previous placement, MareNostrum 5’s accelerated partition has an updated HPL performance, increasing MareNostrum 5’s computational power from 138,2 petaflops achieved in November 2023 to an impressive 175,3 petaflops.  

MareNostrum 5 is also ranked as one of the greenest in the world, having attained 15th place on the Green500 list. Mare Nostrum’s architecture, which includes liquid cooling and state of the art energy-efficient HPC technologies, makes it an extremely green supercomputer despite its impressive computational power.  

Introducing JUPITER 

European exascale supercomputing is on its way as JUPITER, the first European exascale system, is currently under deployment in Germany. Its first module, named JEDI, made its debut on the Top500 list and has taken first place on the Green500 list.  

With its use of graphics processing units (GPUs) and optimised applications for calculations, JEDI is already redefining green supercomputing ahead of JUPITER’s full deployment.  

With an HPL performance of 4,5 petaflops and a TOP500 ranking of 189th place, JEDI represents only a tiny fraction of what JUPITER will be capable of, but is already showcasing some of the technology which will power the first European exascale supercomputer. 

More details on JEDI’s architecture and energy-efficiency can be found in this joint press release. 

Deucalion joins the ranks 

Deucalion enters the list for the first time, following its inauguration in September of 2023, achieving 219th place on the TOP500 list with a HPL performance of 3,9 petaflops. 

Based on ARM technology and leveraging a fully sustainable infrastructure, Deucalion is positioned to support European research and innovation in a range of domains, including meteorology and climate modelling, fluid dynamics and aerodynamics, astrophysics and cosmology, as well as technologies aiming to improve energy efficiency of computing infrastructures. It will also boost innovation in domains such as artificial intelligence, personalised medicine, pharmaceutical/medicine design and new materials, firefighting, territorial planning, but also smart mobility and autonomous vehicles. 

EuroHPC's petascale performance 

EuroHPC's presence throughout the global rankings remains unwavering as all its existing petascale supercomputers, Meluxina, Karolina, Discoverer and Vega, continue to secure positions on the latest lists. Notably, Karolina and MeluXina have clinched places within the top 40 of the Green500 list, further showcasing EuroHPC's strong commitment to sustainable computing practices. 

Further, EuroHPC supercomputing developments are underway as Discoverer, similar to Leonardo, was selected to receive an upgrade aimed at further enhancing its computational capabilities, by adding a GPU partition and improving the system’s storage capacity. The upgrade will lead to an increase of the supercomputer’s operational performance, and provide new functionalities to address evolving user needs.  

This investment underscores the EuroHPC JU's dedication to maintaining its position at the forefront of technological innovation within the European supercomputing landscape, while extending the lifespan and functionality of it its existing machines.  
 

Related Links

• Europe’s flagship supercomputer LUMI top-listed once again – powers scientific breakthroughs in AI and more, press release from LUMI Supercomputer

Background  

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a legal and funding entity created in 2018 to enable the European Union and EuroHPC participating countries to coordinate their efforts and pool their resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.  

The mission of the EuroHPC JU is:  

• to develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the EU a federated, secure hyperconnected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem;  

• to support the development and uptake of demand-oriented and user-driven innovative and competitive supercomputing and quantum computing systems based on a supply chain that will ensure the availability of components, technologies and knowledge;  

• and, to widen the use of that supercomputing and quantum computing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users.  

In order to equip Europe with a world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured nine supercomputers, located across Europe, with more coming soon.  

No matter where in Europe they are located, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers to advance science and support the development of a wide range of applications with industrial, scientific and societal relevance for Europe.  

All the operational EuroHPC supercomputers are available for access to compute time by European HPC users via the EuroHPC Access Calls. The JUPITER precursor JEDI can already be accessed through the JUPITER Research and Early Access Program (JUREAP).