Germany launched “transitional” 48-Pflops Hunter supercomputer based on AMD Instinct MI300A

The HLRS Center for High Performance Computing at the University of Stuttgart in Germany announced the launch of the Hunter HPC system. This supercomputer is planned to be used to solve a wide range of problems in the field of engineering, weather and climate modeling, biomedical research, materials science, etc. In addition, the complex will be used for large-scale modeling, AI applications and data analysis.

The creation of Hunter was announced at the end of 2023: an agreement for the construction of a system worth approximately €15 million was concluded with HPE. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts.

Hunter is based on the same architecture as El Capitan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer. The Cray EX4000 platform is used, and each node is equipped with four HPE Slingshot adapters. The supercomputer uses a combination of Instinct MI300A APU and EPYC Genoa processors. As The Register notes, in total, the system integrates 188 liquid-cooled nodes and has a total of 752 APUs and 512 Epyc chips with 32 cores. The storage system used is HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000, specially designed for HPE Cray supercomputers.

Image source: HLRS

HLRS estimates Hunter’s peak theoretical FP64 performance at 48.1 Pflops of double-precision operations, nearly double that of its Hawk predecessor. In BF16 and FP8 modes, performance is expected to range from 736 Pflops to 1.47 Eflops. At the same time, Hunter consumes 80% less energy than Hawk.

Image source: University of Stuttgart

It is noted that Hunter is intended as a transition system that will pave the way for the next generation HLRS supercomputer called Herder. This complex is planned to be put into operation in 2027. It is expected to provide performance of “several hundred petaflops.”