The Institute of Information Sciences from Maribor can boast of the Vega supercomputer since March of this year. In the implementation of the project worth more than EUR 17 million, which was co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports and the EuroHPC joint venture, NTR engineering also participated as a consortium partner. 

The Vega supercomputer is by far the most powerful supercomputer in Slovenia, as well as one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world at the moment. Namely, it can handle more than 6.8 petaflops per second, or 6.8 million billion calculations per second. It is based on the ATOS BullSequana XH2000 infrastructure and will significantly increase the current European computing power. "However, the growth will continue this year, with the acquisition of another six new supercomputers in various member states. This will create a top European supercomputer ecosystem, which means an important contribution to European digital independence," EuroHPC CEO Anders Dam said at the handover. Jensen. The Vega supercomputer will enable extremely fast data transfer (500 Gbit/s) to other supercomputer centers and their permanent storage (24 PB). All this means great support for open science, research and innovation in Europe. 

According to dr. According to Aleš Bošnjak, director of IZUM, the acquisition of this largest and most important research infrastructure is extremely important for Slovenia, not only for its research projects but for the development of science and the economy in general. The Vega supercomputer will support the development of leading applications in science, public administration and industry in many industries, especially in the areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence and high-performance data analysis. 

The installation of the supercomputer was entrusted to the French company Atos, and our company joined the project as a leading Slovenian partner together with the company ART.SIS from Trzin. 

At NTR Inženiring, we were in charge of all the necessary infrastructure for the operation of the supercomputer. This includes, among other things, an electrical energy supply system and a technical cooling system. The Vega supercomputer consumes up to 830 kW of electricity for its operation, and thanks to our system, the electricity required for cooling does not exceed 50 kW. And this in all seasons, which means that the entire annual PUE is less than 1.06. To achieve such effective technical cooling, we designed a direct water cooling system with adiabatic cooling of external cooling units, and the system uses the waste heat to heat the IZUM building. The circular system created in this way ensures efficient and sustainable use of resources and reduction of the carbon footprint. The plan envisages that the surrounding buildings will also be able to be heated with waste heat, which is a cost-effective and sustainable source of energy, in the coming years. We have also upgraded the comprehensive support infrastructure system of the Vega supercomputer with a central control and management system, which ensures smooth operation regardless of external factors. 

The entire system of supply infrastructure, its control and management is the result of domestic knowledge and experience, so we are rightly proud of our contribution to this successful and high-profile project. This is especially true of the efficient cooling system, which has ensured that the Vega supercomputer is not only one of the most powerful, but also one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world! 

The representatives of the Atos company also confirmed that we completed our part of the task with distinction. Our company was also recommended for the implementation of the supply infrastructure for the establishment of the technical cooling system of the supercomputer at the DHMZ in Zagreb.