First Danish projects for a world class computer

Before long, one of the world’s most powerful computers will become operational in Kajaani, Finland. The supercomputer LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) will have a maximum capacity of 552 petaflops per second. In comparison, the Fugaku supercomputer in Japan, recognized as the world’s most powerful supercomputer today, has a max capacity of 512 petaflops per second.

To prepare scientists and support personnel in the user countries, and the LUMI staff, the supercomputer will commence with pilot projects before the facility opens for further calls.

Denmark – one of the LUMI consortium member countries – has chosen four such pilot projects. 

Two Danish projects will run at the LUMI CPU (Central Processing Unit). Project titles are “High Performance Computing Quantum Chemistry” and “Perfect Antennas for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces” with the respective project leads being Professor Ove Christiansen, Aarhus University, and Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen, Aalborg University.

The two other Danish projects will be conducted at the LUMI GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). Their titles are “BIG-MAP: Battery Interface Genome – Materials Acceleration Platform” led by Professor Teis Vegge, DTU, and “Formation of Stars” led by Associate Professor Troels Haugbølle, University of Copenhagen.

“Our hope is that these four projects will gain extremely important information for the whole research community in Denmark. So that we can tell other researchers what it takes to use a supercomputer like LUMI.  Which traps to avoid, what is required of your code and just overall good practices,” says Eske Christiansen, head of High-Performance Computing in Danish NREN DeiC, at the DeiC homepage.

LUMI is operated by Finnish NREN CSC. Besides Denmark, the countries in the LUMI consortium are Finland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.

It is one of three European pre-exascale computers about to be launched as part of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. 

Further reading.