New supercomputer of Jules Verne consortium offers unprecedented computing power

The world-class supercomputer will be the second so-called Exascale system in Europe to offer European, French and Dutch researchers the unprecedented computing capacity of more than 1 exaflop/s - one billion of billion: ("1" followed by 18 zeros) per second. That is equivalent to more than 5 million modern laptops or PCs, with more than 300 petabytes of storage at start.

Supercomputers of crucial importance

The Jules Verne consortium's supercomputer will act as an accelerator in modelling more precisely the effects of climate change, in the development of new materials, energies and decarbonized mobility, like solar cells, hydrogen (catalysis) and wind energy. It will contribute to the rise of digital twins of the human body toward personalized medicine. It will also address the challenges related to the explosion of data generated by scientific instruments (such as telescopes, satellites and networks of sensors).

The use of supercomputers has become crucial for science, industry and policymakers to process, simulate and assess data in the most energy-efficient way.

Minister Dijkgraaf of the Dutch ministry of Education, Culture, and Science: "It is great news that the European scientific community, with France and the Netherlands at the forefront, joins forces to realize the supercomputer proposed by Jules Verne consortium. With this, Europe reaffirms its position in the global research arena. The author Jules Verne sparked our curiosity with stories about a technological future where one can travel to the moon or the deep sea. Through this supercomputer, we do it again. Scientists are granted a glimpse into the future with this immense computing power, enabling them to contribute to solving fundamental societal issues in areas such as healthcare or combating climate change."

Funding

The overall costs for the acquisition and operation of the system during 5 years are 542 million euros. Of this total, 271 million euros is being provided by EuroHPC (a partnership of the EU, European countries and private parties), 8 million euros by the Dutch Ministry of Culture, Education and Science and 263 million euros mainly by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif), CEA (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives)  and the French General Secretariat for Science and Innovation.

Because the Netherlands is co-investing in the supercomputer, Dutch researchers can directly use some of the computing time on the computer. This is in addition to the computing time that can be requested by European research groups and industry through a proposal because it is a EuroHPC supercomputer.

Jet de Ranitz, CEO of SURF : “We are proud to be working together in the Jules Verne consortium to significantly advance research on societal challenges. This supercomputer will further help Dutch researchers carry out complex simulations in fields ranging from climate science and engineering to medicine and astronomy. We are very proud that our SURF experts in large-scale computing can contribute to this and thus help researchers in their work."

Hosting and support

After being procured by EuroHPC, this supercomputer will be hosted end of 2025 in the TGCC building of CEA (Très Grand Centre de calcul) datacenter of CEA. Beyond the machine itself the Jules Verne consortium, in relation with others EuroHPC’ consortiums, will provide user support to European researchers in porting and optimising their applications on the supercomputer as well as training.

About the Jules Verne consortium

The Jules Verne consortium brings together France represented by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif as Hosting Entity) supported by CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) as Hosting Site, and the Netherlands represented by SURF (the collaborative organisation for IT in Dutch education and research).

Beyond France and The Netherlands, the Jules Verne consortium is open to add other countries, as partners sharing the same vision at the service of science, innovation and sovereign technologies.

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Sylvie RETAILLEAU, French Minister of  Higher Education and Research

“EuroHPC's approval of the Jules Verne consortium's application is excellent news for French and European research. It is another important step forward in securing the funding of an Exascale-class supercomputer, worth a total of €542 million. These computing resources will be needed to meet the scientific and technological challenges that await us, such as climate change, energy transition and health. The supercomputer will therefore play a key role in guaranteeing our technological sovereignty and industrial competitiveness, and I hope that new public and private partners will join the consortium in the coming weeks”.

Philippe LAVOCAT, CEO of GENCI

“One billion billion of operations per second to accelerate the advent of the future. GENCI is delighted and proud with EuroHPC's announcement that the Franco-Dutch Jules Verne consortium has been selected to host and operate an Exascale-class supercomputer. This is international recognition of France's scientific and technical expertise in bridging together applications in numerical simulation, massive data analysis, artificial intelligence and soon hybrid quantum computing and using European hardware and software technologies.

Above all, these are the first steps into the exascale era, which will enable our national research communities to realize the dream of simulating complex phenomena to solve historic scientific enigmas as well as the possibility of being creative in terms of devices to meet industrial and societal challenges for instance, in energy, innovative materials and healthcare, such as the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.”

François JACQ, CEA Chairman

“This supercomputer will be an exceptional instrument for European research at the service of European society and sovereignty. It will enable major advances in many fields that are at the heart of CEA's research activities, such as high-resolution climate modelling, fusion for energy, innovative materials, human digital twins and personalized medicine. It will provide our researchers and industrialists with world-class computing resources to exploit the deluges of data linked to the deployment of new digital systems, autonomously, and thus remain in the global race. The CEA has a long experience of designing and implementing pre-exascale supercomputers in state-of-the-art computing centers."

We will put all our expertise in the design and operation of computing centers at the service of this project, with the objective of performance and control of energy consumption.”