Europe has taken a significant step forward in high-performance computing with the recent order of the LUMI-AI supercomputer, valued at €387.8 million. The contract was signed on August 31 by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC), and the advanced system is set to be housed at the CSC – IT Center for Science in Kajaani, Finland. The launch of LUMI-AI is scheduled for 2027, with AMD targeting the latter half of that year for installation.
The LUMI-AI will be powered by AMD’s EPYC 6th generation processors, configured with up to 256 cores each, as well as AMD Instinct MI430X accelerators. EuroHPC anticipates that this new supercomputer will deliver approximately ten times the performance of the existing LUMI system for artificial intelligence tasks, while also nearly doubling the performance for traditional high-performance computing applications. However, specific details regarding the number of accelerators, memory capacity, and energy consumption for the new system have yet to be disclosed.
This supercomputer will serve as a computational backbone for the European AI Factory, an initiative designed to provide universities, research institutions, startups, and businesses with access to computing resources without the need for building their own data centers. The project funding is split evenly between EuroHPC, which covers 50% through its Digital Europe program, and the LUMI-AI Factory consortium that includes Finland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Poland. EuroHPC is currently developing a network of 19 AI Factories and additional AI Factory Antennas.
Beyond merely training large language models, LUMI-AI is expected to facilitate scientific simulations, manage extensive data sets, and tackle various other computational tasks. The supercomputer will operate using renewable energy, with its waste heat directed to the centralized heating system in Kajaani. Furthermore, it is designed to connect with a future quantum computer, LUMI-IQ, which will potentially integrate conventional computing, AI, and quantum computing within a unified infrastructure.
AMD will provide both the central processors and graphical accelerators for LUMI-AI, which will also employ the AMD ROCm software platform. While EuroHPC has not yet clarified how the projected tenfold advantage in AI task performance will be calculated, the actual extent of this performance increase will be assessed following the system's deployment in 2027.
This ambitious investment in LUMI-AI signifies Europe's commitment to advancing its capabilities in AI and high-performance computing, positioning itself as a competitive player in the global tech landscape. Competitors will need to innovate and adapt to keep pace with these rapid advancements in computing power and AI capabilities.
Informational material. 18+.
