These cool blue shining computer towers belong to the HoreKa supercomputer, the new high-performance computer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). It is one of the 15 most powerful computers in Europe.
Supercomputers are almost indispensable for science today. You can process large amounts of data and simulate complex processes yourself. “The faster high-performance computers solve mathematical equations and process data, the more detailed and reliable the simulations that can be viewed with them,” explains Jennifer Buchmüller from the Steinbuch Center for Computing at KIT. “In many scientific fields such as earth system and climate sciences, materials research, particle physics and engineering, supercomputers have become an indispensable part of everyday life for researchers.”
The latest addition to the supercomputer lineup is the Karlsruhe high-performance computer – HoreKa for short. The supercomputer, which was put into operation at KIT in mid-2021, can provide a computing power of around 17 PetaFLOPS – around 17 quadrillion computing operations per second. That corresponds to the performance of more than 150,000 laptops. This makes it at least 53rd on the top 500 list of global supercomputers.
The new high-performance computer is a hybrid system and consists of two components: one part is based on graphics processors (GPU) -based computing accelerators, the second is based on commercially available standard processors (CPU). The advantage here: The graphics accelerator processors achieve extremely high performance in certain arithmetic operations that are very important for science, for example when solving systems of equations or simulating neural networks in artificial intelligence. For other operations, on the other hand, the standard processors are much better suited. “The strengths of both architectures are cleverly combined to achieve maximum performance,” says Buchmüller.
Another plus is the energy efficiency of the supercomputer and its environment: “The very energy-efficient hot water cooling of the computer building allows us to cool the computer all year round with minimal use of energy. In the colder seasons, the offices can also be heated with the waste heat, ”explains Buchmüller. In the Green500 “list of the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers, HoreKa is currently in 13th place.