The French Commission for Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy (CEA) and Eviden, the Atos company leader in advanced computing, announce the delivery of the EXA1 HE (High Efficiency) supercomputer, based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH3000 technology.
CEA has the mission to guide public decisions and provide the scientific and technical means that civil society (businesses and local authorities) needs to better manage the major societal changes, such as energy transition, digital transformation, future healthcare, defense, and global security. It has 20,000 employees and 9 Research Centers.
In this case, the supercomputer has been designed by Atos to meet the needs of the simulation program led by the Military Applications Division of the CEA. The EXA1-HE represents the second and most innovative stage of the EXA1 program, complementing the EXA1 HF (High Frequency) supercomputer delivered by Eviden in 2021. It meets the requirements of defense programs implemented in the Military Applications Division of the CEA. To be more representative of complex phenomena, simulation requires a constant increase in supercomputer performance, ensuring that calculation times can be maintained reasonable to meet government program milestones and keep energy consumption of computing centers in check.
With a peak performance of 104 Petaflops, the system can achieve a Linpack performance of around 60 Petaflops, equivalent to the 15th most powerful supercomputer in the latest TOP500 ranking of November 2023. Based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH3000 architecture with a patented hot water cooling system, the EXA1 HE is equipped with 477 calculation nodes based on NVIDIA’s Grace Hopper superchips.
The system’s interconnection is based on the latest version of Eviden’s BullSequana eXascale Interconnect (BXI) system, the only European interconnection technology. The network is based on a DragonFly topology and consists of 156 switches. This first accelerated BXI computer paves the way for future BXI technologies for exaflop-class and AI systems, meeting the future needs of research and industrial centers worldwide.
Emmanuel Le Roux, SVP, Global Head of HPC, AI, and Quantum at Eviden, Atos Group, stated: “We are deeply honored by this contract with CEA, which once again demonstrates their trust in Eviden, continuing the EXA1 program with Group teams and expanding a relationship that has lasted for over 20 years. With high-performance computing systems ‘Made in Europe’, such as BullSequana XH3000 and BXI interconnection, co-designed with CEA and produced in their Angers factory, Eviden supports organizations in the private and public sectors, like the Military Applications Division of CEA, in their European sovereignty challenges, allowing them to make the most of their data while maintaining the highest level of security in all circumstances.”
Jacques-Charles Lafoucriere, Director of Programs at the Military Applications Directorate of the CEA, adds: “We are pleased to see the full deployment of this new system. As the first applications have already been run on it using the best-in-class acceleration technologies, also chosen for Exascale systems, the Military Applications Directorate of CEA will be able to meet its HPC and AI needs for the future challenges of its Simulation program.”