Following the inauguration of Luxembourg’s business-oriented national high performance computer (HPC) MeluXina in June 2021, the University of Luxembourg inaugurated its new HPC on 10 November 2021. “High performance computing, high performance data analytics and artificial intelligence are cornerstones of the European, national, and University strategies,” says Prof. Pascal Bouvry, Special Advisor to the university rector for HPC. “The new generations of supercomputers coupled with the existing high-level expertise in the field will leverage new discoveries.”
A supercomputer for research and innovation
The AION supercomputer will enable research and innovation based on intensive computing and large-scale data analysis, in particular the fields computer science, materials physics, bio-medicine and life sciences, cryptology and artificial intelligence, as well as digital history and socio-economic simulations. “Excellent research and teaching need excellent research infrastructures. With AION, the University reinforces its position as an international frontrunner in HPC, and further enhances its attractiveness for the most covetable academic staff, experts and students, and thereby increases Luxembourg’s talent pool,” says Vice-Rector for research Prof. Jens Kreisel.
AION is an Atos/Bull supercomputer which consists of 318 compute nodes (featuring the latest generation of AMD processors), totaling 40704 compute cores and 81408 GB RAM, with a peak performance of about 1,70 PetaFLOPS. By combining the previously existing supercomputer Iris with the new AION system, the university’s HPC reaches a cumulated computing capacity of 2.8 PetaFLOPS coupled with a shared storage capacity of 10 PetaBytes.
New Master’s programme
The launch of AION also ties in with the recently announced new European Master in High Performance Computing, which will start in September 2022 as the first pan-European HPC pilot Master’s programme. The Master will be managed by the University of Luxembourg.