Flanders has invested 8.6 million euros in acquiring a new Tier-1 supercomputer supplied by NEC Deutschland GmbH. The supercomputer will be hosted at VUB’s Green Energy Park in Zellik and will become operational in November 2025. It is designed for energy efficiency, utilizing green power and repurposing heat generated through water cooling for building heating.
It forms part of the Flemish Supercomputer Centre (VSC) platform, providing computing resources for research and innovation across Flanders, focusing on advancing AI capabilities. Researchers from various institutions will be able to apply for access to this high-performance infrastructure starting in November 2025.
The latest addition to Flanders’ research infrastructure is a cutting-edge supercomputer designed to advance artificial intelligence (AI) and large-scale scientific computations. This state-of-the-art facility, located within the Nexus data center, enhances computational capabilities and prioritizes sustainability by utilizing green energy and heat recovery systems at the Green Energy Park.
The supercomputer is equipped with 21 nodes featuring NVIDIA H200 SXM5 GPUs, delivering a total of 11,239.20 TFLOPS in double-precision floating-point operations (FP64). These GPU nodes are optimized for tasks requiring high parallelism, such as AI and machine learning applications.
In addition to the GPU nodes, the system includes 56 high-core nodes, each with 384 cores and 2GB of memory per core, providing a total of 1,548.29 TFLOPS. These nodes are ideal for extensive parallel processing tasks like large-scale simulations or data analysis.
For memory-intensive applications, the supercomputer features 16 high-memory nodes, each with 192 cores and 8GB of memory per core, offering a total computing power of 255.59 TFLOPS. These nodes are particularly suited for big data analytics, complex modeling, and machine learning tasks.
The supercomputer is funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) with support from the Flemish government. It provides researchers and businesses with access to advanced computational resources through an intuitive web portal and four visualization nodes. These tools enhance data analysis and visualization capabilities, supporting AI-specific applications and traditional research workloads.
The system is supported by a high-speed NVIDIA Quantum-2 400 Gbps InfiniBand network, ensuring efficient data transfer and communication between nodes. This infrastructure enables seamless collaboration across distributed computing resources, prioritizing performance and scalability.
Sustainability is at the heart of this project. The supercomputer operates using green energy and incorporates heat recovery systems to repurpose waste heat for heating buildings at the Green Energy Park. Located within the Nexus data center in Flanders, the facility ensures efficient operation while minimizing environmental impact.
This advanced computational resource drives innovation in AI and scientific research and sets a benchmark for sustainable technology infrastructure in Flanders.
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