It was with great fanfare, in a privatized wing of the Palais de Tokyo, that Atos unveiled this Wednesday, February 16, the BullSequana XH3000, the new figurehead of its range of supercomputers. It is six times more powerful per square meter than the previous model, the BullSequana XH2000, and can therefore be positioned as an “exascale class” supercomputer, i.e. capable of reaching a computing power of order of the exaflop (one billion billion operations per second).
Manufactured in Angers, it can integrate CPU and GPU chips from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and SiPearl, a French start-up that wants to create microprocessors. The new supercomputer also features a 4th generation direct liquid cooling system that can operate at 40°C. In other words, this machine is cooled with hot water!
This launch comes at just the right time.
“There are several exascale supercomputer projects in Europe and we are ready to respond to them”explains Agnès Boudot, senior vice-president HPC at Atos.
Indeed, the European Union is in the process of building a continental network of very high performance supercomputers, within the framework of the EuroHPC JU initiative. Four supercomputers are already operational in Luxembourg, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Three others are being created in Italy, Spain and Portugal. Their performances vary from 6 to 500 petaflops.
A call for projects for two other supercomputers, including one of exascale power, has just been completed. The research centers that will be selected will then have to build these machines within the next two years. For its part, the United Kingdom also wants to have an exascale supercomputer by 2025. We understand better why Atos is ready to release the order book.
Source : Atos