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University of Stuttgart launches supercomputer; it is the 10th supercomputer the EU has procured

Germany has launched the Hunter supercomputer, powered by AMD technology, at the High-Performance Computing Centre of the University of Stuttgart (“HLRS”). This €15 million supercomputer, which went live on 16 January 2025, boasts a theoretical peak performance of 48.1 petaflops, nearly doubling the speed of HLRS’s previous flagship supercomputer, Hawk.

The supercomputer is designed as a transitional system to prepare HLRS’s user community for the upcoming Herder supercomputer, scheduled for installation in 2027. Herder is expected to offer several hundred petaflops of performance, marking a significant leap in computational power.

What do they want to use this latest supercomputer for? For artificial intelligence (“AI”), weather and climate modelling and biomedical research programs.

On the heels of a Bloomberg report that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (“HPE”) has won a $1 billion deal with Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) social network for AI-optimised servers, a major European supercomputing centre announced on Thursday the start of operations of an HPE-Cray supercomputer powered by American multinational Advanced Micro Devices (“AMD”) chips.

Given the name Hunter, the supercomputer is now available to German researchers and corporate partners (“user community”) to use, for example, for weather and climate modelling, biomedical research, materials science and engineering simulations.

“The €15 million system, paid for by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Science, Research and Art and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research will support a variety of public and private research endeavours ranging from engineering and weather modelling to biomedical research, materials science and yes, of course, AI,” The Register said.

This intended use is confirmed by Inside HPC, “Hunter will offer an infrastructure for large-scale simulation, artificial intelligence and data analytics applications in science, industry and the public sector.”

“Hunter offers scientists at the University of Stuttgart and across Germany a future-proof infrastructure for AI-based simulations and high-performance computing of a new quality,” said Prof. Peter Middendorf, Rector of the University of Stuttgart.

“The rapid development of AI and an increasing focus on sustainability in supercomputing mean that high-performance computing is currently going through an exciting, transformative period,” said Prof. Michael Resch, Director of HLRS. “With Hunter, our user community gains a state-of-the-art infrastructure that will support them in navigating this changing HPC landscape and enable them to remain competitive at the frontiers of scientific discovery and industrial innovation.”

Inside HPC explained that the adoption of an architecture based on central processing units (“CPUs”) and accelerated processing units (“APUs”) will make Hunter a powerful system for AI. Although Hunter will continue to support traditional applications of high-performance computing, it also offers the potential to expand HLRS’s user community to include data scientists and artificial intelligence specialists interested in developing customised large language models, deep learning projects, and complex data analytics.

Demonstrating the potential of Hunter for supporting new kinds of artificial intelligence applications, Inside HPC said, Stuttgart-based AI startup Seedbox.ai has already begun using the new system during its test phase to train new large language models in 24 European languages.  Large language models are advanced AI technologies designed for natural language processing tasks, such as understanding, analysing and generating text.

As part of a partnership with HLRS signed in 2024, Seedbox will continue using Hunter to develop scalable, sustainable and secure “Made in Germany” AI technologies.

Hunter will implement a dynamic power capping software functionality system. After dynamic power capping was implemented on the Hawk system, a study showed that the system software reduced the overall power consumption of applications by about 20 per cent without significant losses in performance.

With its combination of CPUs, graphics processing unit (“GPU”) accelerators and high bandwidth memory, it is claimed that Hunter consumes 80 per cent less energy at peak performance than its predecessor Hawk.

In addition, the combination of CPUs and GPUs in a single package will make it easier to develop and run new kinds of converged computing workflows that combine simulation, data analysis and artificial intelligence in innovative ways. Simulation could be used on Hunter, for example, to produce synthetic data sets for the training of AI algorithms. Conversely, AI could be integrated into simulation workflows to accelerate computationally expensive codes.

Before the announcement on Thursday, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (“EuroHPC JU”) had already procured 9 supercomputers located across Europe: Finland, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Czechia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Portugal and the Forschungszentrum Jülich campus, a German national research institution that conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, information and bioeconomy and is one of the largest interdisciplinary research institutions in Europe.

EuroHPC JU is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners to “develop a World Class Supercomputing Ecosystem in Europe.”  The three private partners are coalition groups of private organisations: the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (“ETP4HPC”), the Big Data Value Association (“BDVA”) and the European Quantum Industry Consortium (“QuIC”).

On 19 December, EuroHPC JU signed a contract with a CSC-IT led consortium to develop the EuroHPC Federation Platform that will integrate supercomputing, AI systems, quantum computing & data resources across Europe. The CSC-IT is owned 70% by the Finnish state and the remaining 30% by Finnish higher education institutions.

Note from RW: I don’t know much about computers or artificial intelligence so the technicalities and the excitement that computer geeks express are lost on me.  But what I do know is that artificial intelligence will be used to control every aspect of our lives in the planned-for global technocratic and totalitarian system.

For me, the names for HLRS’ supercomputers – “Hunter” and “Herder”- are enough to raise concerns about the motives behind developing these supercomputers.   Who or what are they hunting?  Who or what are they herding?  These are the first questions that come to mind.

It’s no surprise then that I’m not feeling excited about these developments.  Instead, I see the ominous agenda for the world to be controlled by a centralised global government, where digitalisation and AI will play a pivotal role, marching forward.  Digital IDs, central bank digital currencies (“CBDCs”), the Internet of Things, Internet of Bodies and the Internet of Everything, for example, will require enormous amounts of computing power.

It’s a shame more computer enthusiasts don’t recognise and speak out about what’s truly happening in their industry.

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University of Stuttgart launches supercomputer; it is the 10th supercomputer the EU has procured

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