Levante: New supercomputer for climate research inaugurated in Hamburg

A new supercomputer called Levante has been inaugurated at the German Climate Computing Center. It is said to enable incredibly detailed climate simulations and allows 14 quadrillion mathematical operations per second (14 petaflops).

Levante: Supercomputer goes into operation in Hamburg

On September 22, 2022, the new Levante supercomputer began operations at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). It is provided by the company Atos and is used for climate research. Due to its enormous computing power, it is expected to enable detailed climate simulations that have not been feasible so far.

Levante is made up of 2,832 closely networked computers, each with two processors, which together have a performance of 14 petaflops and can perform 14 quadrillion mathematical operations per second. An impressive figure, although not quite up to the Mare Nostrum 5 with 314 PFLOPS.

Each AMD EPYC processor has 64 CPU cores, giving the supercomputer a total of more than 362,000 processing cores. The main memory comprises more than 800 terabytes, which are divided into memory sizes between 256 GB and 1,024 GB. In addition to the CPU partition with classical computers, Levante has a partition with 60 GPU nodes that provide an additional peak computing power of 2.8 petaflops.

Data transfer between the computers is extremely fast thanks to NVIDIA Mellanox HDR 200G. Up to 200 Gbit/s are possible. The data is stored on a storage system with a total capacity of 132 petabytes, which is supplied by DDN.

Back in November 2017, an agreement between the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg had signed off on the financial resources for Levante. A total amount of 45 million euros was agreed.

• More: By 2030: U.S. supercomputers to reach 100 exaflops

High-resolution climate models

“The new Levante supercomputer at DKRZ will enable even more comprehensive, higher-resolution and thus better climate projections in the future,” says Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger of the FDP.

They are to provide even more comprehensive and detailed information about the effects of climate change than was previously possible at all. The Levante supercomputer also opens up new possibilities in terms of energy efficiency.

According to Prof. Dr. Thomas Ludwig, Managing Director of DKRZ, the waste heat will be used to heat laboratories in the neighboring university building. In doing so, the supercomputer enables particularly close-meshed climate simulations (with a mesh width of only 1 km).

“Although only for a few hours, this has never been possible for anyone else before. This was only possible because we now have Levante,” adds Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.