LUMI highlights from the EuroHPC Summit Week 2024

A beautiful springlike Antwerp welcomed almost 800 participants for the annual EuroHPC Summit Week to discuss everything HPC. This year’s theme was “To exascale and beyond – Unleashing the power of European HPC and quantum computing.” Much of the presentations and panel discussions centered mainly on AI, industry use of the systems, and exascale readiness; traditional HPC played a minor role this year.

Insightful discussions and presentations

The four days were packed with insightful presentations, panel discussions, and, above all, interesting discussions during the breaks. Our colleagues from CSC brought many interesting facts, such as AI, quantum computing, and sustainability, to the conference from the LUMI point of view.

Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of CSC – IT Center for Science, was part of the opening day’s “Fostering European Leadership in AI” panel discussion. He pointed out that over 50% of LUMI’s capacity is already used in AI-related research. When discussing “AI Factories,” he called for a holistic approach: when using this term, we should talk about the whole ecosystem encompassing HPC systems, data, AI, and competence development. The Plenary sessions from the EuroHPC Summit Week are replayable on the event’s website.

The second day started with parallel sessions. In the “EuroHPC Systems: Current Usage, Anticipated Needs and Future Challenges“, Emmanuel Ory, Development Manager at CSC and leader of the LUMI User Support Team, shed light on LUMI’s current use: the system is practically 100% in action all the time. He also introduced the audience to LUMI’s new easy-to-use web interface and LUMI’s connection to VTT’s Helmi quantum computer – quantum computing being one of the emerging themes at the Summit Week compared to previous years. He also gave examples of some of LUMI’s use cases. You can find more use cases on the LUMI website.

Per Öster, Director of Advanced Computing Facility at CSC, gave an overview of LUMI’s world-class sustainability features at the “How Does One Define an “Energy Efficient” HPC System? From Data to Action” session. In the session, energy consumption and other factors related to data centers’ energy efficiency and sustainability in general were discussed. Questions such as what to measure, how to measure, and for which purpose were raised. Although benchmarks such as the Green500 list exist, they only give a certain point of view to the question of data centers’ energy efficiency. For LUMI, sustainability has been taken into account since day one. Öster went through LUMI’s different energy-related key figures, and highlighted that LUMI’s Energy Reuse Factor in 2023 was a remarkable 0,57, meaning that 57% of the energy put into the system was taken into reuse.

Presentations from the sessions are available on the event’s website.

LUMI showcased at the demo lab

One of the conference’s highlights was the demo lab, a platform where each hosting entity could showcase their systems, capabilities, and usage. On Tuesday afternoon, LUMI took the spotlight with an immersive experience led by a team of talented EUMaster4HPC students. They had developed scientifically and computationally complex codes and some more visually appealing ones to suit people from diverse backgrounds; for instance, visitors could create fractals using a QR code on their mobile devices. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Kacper Kramarz-Fernandez, Henrique Gil, Simone Foderà, and Luca Guffanti for their invaluable help and dedication to the LUMI demo lab, and to Jørn Dietze from the LUMI User Support Team for your excellent guidance – the team’s enthusiasm was the key to the LUMI demo lab’s success!

Making future connections

Tuesday was rounded off with a first-ever career fair aimed at students and early career attendees. This gave us an excellent opportunity to connect with future HPC professionals in a speed-dating fashion.

The week also included celebrations as the Netherlands became the LUMI consortium’s eleventh member country. Kimmo Koski noted that this brings valuable insights and competencies to the consortium allowing the LUMI consortium to step up efforts to create state-of-the-art HPC and AI to address complex research questions and boost industrial excellence.

We want to thank the EuroHPC JU for organizing this successful event! See you in Poland next year!

Want to see some of the highlights? Have a look at our recap video from the EuroHPC Summit Week below:

Authors: Jonna Helenius and Anni Jakobsson, CSC – IT Center for Science