One of the fastest supercomputers in the world is to be run 100% by hydropower from European energy company Vattenfall.
LUMI, one of three leadership-class supercomputers, will be located at CSC’s data center in Kajaani, Finland, as part of a pan-European initiative. From 1 January 2021, Vattenfall will deliver a yearly volume of up to 100GWh of origin-certified hydropower to the data center.
“Vattenfall wants to enable a fossil-free living in one generation. To win this electricity supply agreement shows that we have a product and solutions that well matches the needs of our customers in Finland,” said Magnus Westberg, Head of Production Clients at Vattenfall Business Sales. “CSC has high ambitions to be fossil free and new digital solutions and technology can in a smart way be used to enable that. I will personally also follow the exiting development of the supercomputer”
“Supercomputers consume a lot of electricity, so the use of hydro power is important to reach climate goals,” added CSC’s Managing Director Kimmo Koski. “Besides the advantage of renewable energy we have excess heat from cooling water, thanks to which waste heat can be utilized in Kajaani's district heating network. This reduces both costs and the carbon footprint. LUMI will be one of the world’s fastest supercomputers and will serve European research and innovation activities, strengthening the competitiveness of Europe and increasing its scientific potential.”
The theoretical peak performance of LUMI will be over 200 petaflops (2*1017 floating point operations per second). This, like the performance of applications on LUMI, is approximately ten times faster than with the Piz Daint supercomputer, which is currently the fastest in Europe.
