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CSC

Raute Corporation is a global group that develops and supplies technology and services to the wood industry. Raute is the market leader in veneer, plywood, and LVL manufacturing technology and the only company in the world able to offer customers a complete mill-level solution. Raute combines technology, analyzers and services to ensure more efficient, predictable and profitable production for its customers.  

Jyrki Pesonen, Research Manager of the Research Department at Raute’s Analyzers business unit in Kajaani, Finland, is working with his team to achieve this goal.

“We are questioning existing operating models and redefining the factories of the future. Data and digitalisation are our tools in this work,” says Pesonen. 

Pesonen’s team uses machine vision to identify the properties of wood materials. Teaching machine vision is computationally intensive work.

“Wood species are different, and every tree is different. Our goal is to ensure that our customer’s production makes optimal use of the raw material, so there is a huge amount of data,” says Pesonen.

LUMI supercomputer speeds up calculations

Pesonen has always been interested in new technologies because they can offer opportunities to discover and build disrupting innovations that can significantly change Raute’s industry. Thus, the pan-European LUMI supercomputer, located in Kajaani, Finland, and its huge CPU and GPU computing capacity were familiar to Pesonen.

Mikko Kerttula, CSC’s Customer Manager, had visited Raute to share that LUMI supercomputer is also available for companies and can be tested free of charge through a Try&Buy project. Although the unique opportunity to try out one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was interesting, there was no need for a closer look at that point, as Raute has its own computing server in Kajaani for the research unit’s data analysis needs.  

Then, a customer of Raute faced a situation where Pesonen saw an opportunity to try LUMI for the first time.

“We encountered a problem in our research work that needed to be solved quickly. The production data we were collecting, the physical wood samples, were in danger of becoming contaminated, which would have ruined the data. We had to act quickly to get the necessary results analysed in time to continue our work smoothly,” says Pesonen.

One calculation round on LUMI Supercomputer was done ten times faster than with the method we normally use.

Jyrki Pesonen, Raute

In that situation, testing LUMI supercomputer as a Try & Buy project was worth a chance. Pesonen contacted Kerttula, and things started to progress quickly – and they were also quickly finished. One calculation round on LUMI Supercomputer was done ten times faster than with the method Pesonen’s team normally used.

“Without Mikko and Jyrki Savolainen, CSC’s Application Specialist, this would not have been possible. They were a great help in setting up the computing capacity and transferring the data to LUMI,” says Pesonen.

“It all went smoothly on the first try. The hardest part was creating the right SSH keys for authentication and installing them correctly in the client software. And in the end, this wasn’t difficult either.” 

Sustainability themes and social values are important 

For Raute, reducing climate emissions and other harmful environmental impacts are important sustainability themes. As part of the design process, Raute’s machines and technologies are continuously improved for greater efficiency.

“The aim is to enable our customer factories around the world to use raw materials as efficiently as possible, but with as little impact on the environment as possible, for example by saving energy,” explains Pesonen. 

The energy consumption of training and using AI is a subject of intense debate worldwide.

“We also expect our partners to act in a sustainable way. LUMI’s sustainability and the fact that LUMI uses certified, 100% renewable energy is very important to us. Cooperation with CSC and LUMI is a natural fit for us, as we share the same values and goals that contribute to our common climate work,” says Joona Kallinen, Head of Marketing and Communications at Raute.

“The social aspect is also important. I hope that Finnish companies will understand that high-level product development combined with exceptional computing power is not only reserved for domain of academics and global corporations. The cooperation with LUMI is a good example of this. In Kajaani, we do high-level research on a world-class supercomputer, and the results of that research can be used by our customers around the world. This also increases competitiveness worldwide,” Kallinen continues.

The future is secured: LUMI AI supercomputer in Kajaani in 2026 

After a positive test trial, Raute has continued to use LUMI. The news announced in December that an AI-optimised LUMI AI supercomputer will be placed in Kajaani, Finland, was also welcomed by Raute. Wood raw material data is not the only data mass that Raute needs to interpret.

“Raute’s mission is to help its customers optimise and develop their entire production. This means that we will continue to process huge amounts of data. So far we have mainly used CPU capacity, but we are also exploring the possibility of using GPU capacity,” says Pesonen.

“LUMI, in the future LUMI AI, and the possibilities they offer will add value to the development of our services.”

CSC also welcomes the news and the growing interest from Finnish companies.

“LUMI’s capacity has been offered and marketed to Finnish companies for more than two years. Business use is increasing all the time, and it is important that companies are offered a continuum to high performance computing beyond LUMI with the new, more powerful LUMI AI supercomputer,” says Kerttula.

“When we visit events and companies, it is clear to see how enthusiasm and interest in using LUMI is growing all the time – not only in large companies, but also in SMEs and startups,” continues Savolainen.

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Headshot.

Mikko Kerttula

Customer Manager, LUMI industrial use

Mikko Kerttula promotes LUMI industrial use especially to companies in Northern and Eastern Finland.

+358 50 3812766
Headshot.

Jyrki Savolainen

Application Specialist

Jyrki Savolainen is responsible for supporting the implementation of high-performance computing for companies and the development of data analytics, especially in the Northern Finland region.

+358 50 5279404