A new supercomputer, said to be the most powerful in Europe, has been completed and launched by Italian oil multinational Eni, which will use it to assist with things like improving the accuracy of geological and fluid dynamic studies for CO2 storage, creating more efficient batteries, and optimizing the biofuels supply chain.
The system, named HPC6 (for High Performance Computing) provides a peak computational power of 606 PFlop/s, or over 600 quadrillion mathematical operations per second. Eni said it had achieved a debut ranking of number 5 in the TOP500’s list of supercomputers (released on 18 November, 2024). “This is an excellent result that ranks HPC6 as first supercomputer in Europe, the world’s first industrial-use supercomputer and the only non-US system among the top 5 in the world.”
The group said the launch of HPC6 marked a pivotal moment in its decarbonisation strategy.
Existing applications for high-performance computing at Eni include optimizing industrial plant operations, improving the accuracy of geological and fluid dynamics studies for CO2 storage, developing more efficient batteries, optimizing the biofuel supply chain, developing materials, and the simulation of plasma behavior in magnetic confinement fusion.
The group’s CEO Claudio Descalzi said: “Technological advancements allow us to use energy more efficiently by reducing emissions and promoting the development of new energy solutions.
“We have integrated supercomputing throughout our entire business chain, transforming it into an indispensable lever for achieving Net Zero and creating value.”
Eni’s new HPC6 system delivers a significant increase over the 70 PFlop/s of its predecessor HPC4 and HPC5 systems, to over 600 peak PFlop/s. It “combines CPUs and GPUs in a hybrid configuration, with over 3400 compute nodes and nearly 14,000 GPUs, optimizing both computational performance and energy efficiency.” It employs HPE’s Cray EX4000 and Cray ClusterStor E1000 systems.
HPC6 is installed in a dedicated area within the firm’s Green Data Centre, in Ferrera Erbognone, near Milan.
A new liquid cooling system is said to improve energy efficiency by optimizing the absorption of heat generated by the new machine.
