The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has put its HoreKa 2 supercomputer into operation, a 33-petaflops hybrid system that cost €17 million ($19m) and nearly doubles the 17 petaflops of its 2021 predecessor.

Lenovo manufactured the machine, which is housed at KIT Campus North in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. The university will use it for research in climate, new materials, particle physics, energy, mobility, and AI.

What hardware does HoreKa 2 use?

The system splits into two partitions:

• CPU partition: Lenovo SD665 V3 servers with AMD Epyc 9655 'Turin' processors
• GPU partition: Lenovo ThinkSystem SC777 V4 servers with Nvidia GB200 GPUs, interconnected via Nvidia's NVLink networking technology

HoreKa 2 carries 250TB of memory. Its storage system runs on IBM Storage Scale Systems (SSS 6000) with a two-tier NVMe-plus-HDD architecture.

How is the system cooled?

The GPU partition uses Lenovo's Neptune liquid cooling technology, which relies on hot water. According to the university, this ensures "particularly energy-efficient operation and free cooling all over the year."

KIT said it gave performance and energy efficiency equal priority during development and procurement, and claims HoreKa 2 ranks among the most energy-efficient supercomputers of its performance class worldwide. Power supply at Campus North comes entirely from renewable sources.

"HoreKa 2 strengthens the digital capabilities of KIT and combines cutting-edge research with a clear focus on sustainability. It will allow us to create the conditions necessary to conduct data-intensive research and run modern AI applications in an energy-efficient and sustainable manner," said Professor Kora Kristof, VP of digitalization and sustainability at KIT.

"Researchers from nearly all disciplines will benefit from the new system," added Professor Martin Frank, member of the Board of Directors of the KIT Scientific Computing Center (SCC). "With the new system, we are able to double the computing power for simulations and AI applications."

What comes next at Campus North?

The supercomputer is not the only compute investment at the site. Last week, KIT announced plans for an AI data center at Campus North. The university estimates the facility will cost €24 million ($27.2m) and will be designed to support other higher education institutions, government organizations, and researchers.

Combined, the two projects bring KIT's announced compute infrastructure spending at the campus to roughly €41 million ($46.2m), with HoreKa 2 replacing the original HoreKa system inaugurated five years ago.