LUMI: One of the most powerful supercomputers in the world

For European researchers

LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) is a unique European supercomputer located in the CSC’s data center in Kajaani and owned by the European Commission’s EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and hosted by a consortium of 11 European countries. In addition to Finland, the consortium members are the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. The consortium is an example of a new type of high-performance computing investment: with support from the EU, the consortium countries have invested in a single top-class supercomputer located in one of the member states.

By supporting leading-edge Finnish and European research, LUMI helps to boost employment and competitiveness. LUMI’s users comprise European researchers at higher education institutions and research institutes, as well as companies. The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking allocates one-half of LUMI’s computing capacity to European researchers, while the rest is reserved for the consortium’s member states.

Researchers can access these resources in two ways: all European researchers can apply for an allocation of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s quota, and researchers in consortium member states can also apply for the resources as part of their country’s quota.

Businesses are offered a unique opportunity to use high-performance computing in product development and innovation, as up to one-fifth of Finland’s quota and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s LUMI supercomputer quota is reserved for them.

What is LUMI used for?

The state-of-the-art computing performance provided by the supercomputer is needed to conduct leading-edge research in many different data and compute-intensive fields. Different data-driven methods play an increasingly important role in research, administration, and industry.

For Finnish researchers, LUMI offers world-class resources that enable them to tackle computational challenges on a significantly larger scale than what would be possible, relying on CSC’s national systems alone. LUMI’s resources are an important advantage for Finnish research groups in international scientific projects. In addition, they make it easier for researchers to gain access to various project consortia. Access to LUMI’s resources is also a major asset when recruiting foreign scientists and experts to Finnish higher education institutions and research institutes.

LUMI can be used to solve problems such as:

• Producing more accurate climate models and coupled models: how will our living conditions change as the climate warms up? LUMI is used in the EU’s Destination Earth program and digital twins of the climate system.
• Analyzing data from new measuring devices for sequencing entire genomes and comparing them with clinical data increases our understanding of the causes and individual treatment of diseases and hereditary illnesses.
• Applying artificial intelligence (deep learning) to big data analysis, including atmospheric and environmental sciences, climate modelling, material sciences, and linguistics.
• Research and training of algorithms for self-driving cars and ships with unprecedented computing performance.
• In social sciences, large-scale data analysis of social networks and prediction of phenomena.
• Time-critical modelling, for example, in fights against pandemics and drug development.

Eco-efficient supercomputer

LUMI offers world-class ecological sustainability and cost-effectiveness. LUMI points the direction for the European ICT sector in achieving the EU’s ambitious climate protection and green transition goals. Minimized environmental loading, energy consumption that saves taxpayers’ money, and use of waste heat from cooling the computer in the City of Kajaani’s district heating network make LUMI an outstanding example of a data center that supports climate protection and the green transition.

International Awards for LUMI

LUMI and its data center have received several international awards:

• In the annual Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards of the journal HPCwire, LUMI has twice received the award for Best Sustainability Innovation in HPC (2021 and 2022).
• At the DCD Awards gala, LUMI was presented with the Data Center Design Innovation Award (2021).
• LUMI’s data center came first in the Innovative Project of the Year category of the Electrical Review and Data Centre Review Excellence Awards (2022).
• HPCwire journal presented LUMI with its Superlative Award for data center design (2023).
• Green Data Centre of the Year Award at the Data Centre World Awards (2023).
• HPCwire’s Reader’s Choice Award for Top Energy-Efficient HPC Achievement (2023) 
• Three projects utilizing LUMI were awarded at HPCwire’s Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards (2024): Destination Earth for Best Use of HPC in Physical Sciences (Readers’ Choice), Climate DT for Top HPC-Enabled Scientific Achievement (Readers’ Choice), and Digifarm for Best HPC Collaboration (Academia/Government/Industry) (Editors’ Choice).