Swedish Research Council is taking part in the building of one of the world’s largest and fastest supercomputers

EuroHPC, the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking*, has selected eight locations in Europe where Europe’s first supercomputers will be built. These can then be used by researchers in Europe, and by industry and business to develop new applications within lots of different areas, from designing medicines and new materials to fighting climate change.

One of the supercomputers will be located in Kajaani, Finland. The machine will be around 10 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer that currently exists in Europe.

The Finnish consortium is called LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure), and has participants from Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Norway, Poland and Switzerland. The new supercomputer and infrastructure in Kajaani will be used by European researchers within a number of disciplines, such as climate research, pharmaceutical and cancer research, and artificial intelligence.

The budget for the computer centre in Kajaani is 207.1 million EUR. The planned production start is the fourth quarter of 2020. The other host cities for the supercomputers are Sofia (Bulgaria), Ostrava (Czechia), Bologna (Italy), Bissen (Luxembourg), Minho (Portugal), Maribor (Slovenia) and Barcelona (Spain).

*EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is an initiative supported by European countries and the EU.

Read more about the consortium on the Finnish website CSC - IT Center for Science External link.

Read more about the initiative on the European Commission’s website External link.