Hewlett Packard Enterprise Builds South Korea’s Most Powerful Supercomputer, KISTI-6, Featuring 600 Petaflops and Fanless Liquid Cooling System

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has been selected by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), a government-funded research institute, to build South Korea’s next-generation supercomputer, KISTI-6. Expected to be the most powerful supercomputer in the country, it will feature a 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system for enhanced efficiency and density, with a theoretical peak performance of 600 petaflops. The system, built on HPE’s Cray EX4000 architecture, will include partitions powered by NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and AMD EPYC processors, alongside HPE Slingshot interconnect technology for high-speed data transfers. KISTI-6 will support advanced research in artificial intelligence (AI) and simulations, serving a wide range of users including research institutions, universities, and commercial companies. The collaboration aims to strengthen South Korea’s capabilities in scientific research and AI innovation while promoting sustainable computing solutions.

KISTI-6 will serve as the backbone for artificial intelligence and simulation research in Korea, supporting diverse data-intensive research projects across research institutions, universities, and commercial companies. The system is expected to achieve a theoretical peak performance of 600 petaflops (more than half an exaflop).

The supercomputer will be built on the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4000 system with two distinct partitions:

• One featuring NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips
• Another featuring 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors

Key technical features include:

• HPE Slingshot interconnect 400, providing 400 gigabits-per-second data transfer speeds
• HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 with fast NVMe and high-capacity NL-SAS disks
• HPE Data Management Framework for efficient and scalable data management

Sik Lee, President of KISTI, emphasized their goal to “cement Korea’s position as a leading country for supercomputing and sovereign AI innovation” through this partnership with HPE, AMD, and NVIDIA. The initiative aims to nurture experts in data utilization, high-performance computing, and AI technologies to enhance Korea’s scientific and technological competitiveness.

HPE will design and deliver the fully integrated solution, which will be housed in a government datacenter specially adapted for liquid-cooled systems.