The Way is Open to Build a EuroHPC World-class Supercomputer in Sweden

Once procured, Arrhenius will be a mid-range supercomputer capable of executing over 40 petaflops, or 40 million billion operations per second. This new system is named after Carl Axel Arrhenius, a Swedish geologist and chemist who discovered gadolinite in 1787. It will be hosted by Linköping University, Sweden where the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) is located. Organisations such as RISE, the Research Institute of Sweden and ENCCS, the EuroCC Competence Centre Sweden, will be involved to ensure an appropriate uptake from industrial and public sector users. Being placed in Sweden will allow Arrhenius to be both climate- and cost-effective, as Sweden has among the lowest greenhouse gas emission as well as cost per kilowatt hour in Europe.

Arrhenius will be able to tackle Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and other capacity demanding applications that need high memory bandwidth and fast data transfer to disk. Arrhenius will ensure the high-level of security and data integrity needed for research based on data on individuals and product development by private enterprises. It will power applications in a wide range of areas, from designing medicines and new materials to fighting climate change. It will advance science and boost the innovation potential of enterprises while ultimately improving the citizens’ quality of life.

Just as the other existing EuroHPC supercomputers, Arrhenius will be available to serve a wide range of European users, no matter where in Europe they are located, in the scientific community, as well as in industry, and the public sector. Access to the computing resources of the new machine will be jointly managed by Sweden and the EuroHPC JU in proportion to their investments.   

With a total budget of EUR 68,5 million, the machine will be co-funded by the EuroHPC JU, with budget of stemming from the Digital Europe Programme (DEP) and by contributions from the Swedish Research Council’s funding for NAISS. The JU will co-fund up to 35% of the total cost of the supercomputer.

The hosting agreement, which has now been signed, is a contractual document that defines the roles, rights and obligations of each party.  The procurement process for this new supercomputer will be managed by NAISS and LiU in collaboration with EuroHPC JU and will begin in the immediate future.

More details

• Agreement signed – supercomputer Arrhenius to Linköping, Linköping University's press release

• Hosting agreement with EuroHPC JU paves the way for Arrhenius, NAISS press release

Background

The 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.  Three of these EuroHPC supercomputers are now ranked among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers: LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy and MareNostrum 5 in Spain. 

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