AMD to Build 2 New Supercomputers in Germany

The proverbial paint is still dry on AMD's new Instinct MI300 chips, and yet the company has already said they're being used for a new supercomputer in Germany. AMD has announced "Exascale Supercomputing Is Coming to Stuttgart" and will build two computers: one that will upgrade an existing system to 39 PFLOPS and a future exascale machine similar to its current Frontier supercomputer. The two machines will be known as Hunter and Herder, with the former coming online in 2025 and the latter poised for a 2027 launch.

The two new supercomputers result from a new contract signed by the University of Stuttgart and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It will see the organization upgrade its existing Hawk supercomputer and install a second system in the future at the HLRS, which is a research institute and supercomputer center in Stuttgart. The big news here is this is the first supercomputer contract for AMD's all-new MI300A chip, which combines a CPU, GPU, and high-bandwidth memory onto the same package. These data center "APUs" will go into Hawk, the center's current flagship supercomputer at 26 PFLOPS, which is nothing to sneeze at. This computer debuted at #16 on the Top500 list in 2020, so it's neither old nor slow. That said, we certainly understand the itch to upgrade a PC, so there's no shade coming from this direction.

The existing Hawk system was cutting-edge in 2020, but is about to get upgraded from 26 PFLOPS to 39 PFLOPS via AMD's Instinct MI300A CPU+GPUs. Credit: HLRS

The center's Hawk system currently uses AMD Epyc "Rome" CPUs and Nvidia A100 GPUs, so it's cutting-edge for 2020. The new version, Hunter, will be based on the HPE Cray EX4000 supercomputer and will have 136 nodes. The org says this new version is a giant leap for the center, as it marks the beginning of a transition period away from relying primarily on CPUs to more energy-efficient GPUs instead. Updating the system to AMD's new MI300A will boost its output to 39 PFLOPS while also increasing efficiency by 80% thanks to the APU's design and integrated memory. This computer will be used for simulations, artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance data analytics (HPDA), and world-class industrial and academic research.

Though Hunter is expected to be operational by 2025, it will also build a new Exascale system named Herder using AMD accelerators. The hardware for this system will be determined in 2025, so it's likely to be whatever the next iteration of the MI300 is, as it won't be powered on until 2027. AMD also currently powers the world's only Exascale supercomputer, Frontier, which still sits on the top step of the podium at Top500.org despite debuting in June of 2022. Unlike Hawk and Hunter, this mega system will use GPUs as the primary compute source, which we assume will be the standard in 2027. The center says it's making this transition due to the benefits of the massively parallel design of GPUs compared with CPUs.