The European Space Agency has inaugurated its Space high-performance computing environment at ESRIN, Italy. « The opening, on Wednesday 12 March, marks a milestone in ESA’s mission to push the boundaries of innovation for European space activities » stated EASA in a press release.
Space HPC is designed to enhance ESA’s scientific research and technological development efforts, while also providing small and medium-enterprises (SMEs) with access to resources that foster innovation and collaboration within the European space industry. The computational environment is designed to process massive datasets, run complex simulations, and accelerate artificial intelligence applications.
Several test use cases from various ESA departments were presented to show the capabilities and strategic importance of Space HPC and demonstrating the benefits of its computing performance – for example, the Space Safety Programme has used Space HPC to improve end-to-end space weather modelling in Europe to help improve warnings of solar activity that could harm infrastructure in space or on the ground.
Key features
- Over 34,000 CPU Cores and 108 NVIDIA H100 GPUs deliver 5 petaflops of raw performance
- High-Speed Storage: a robust 3.6 PB SSD storage solution with 500GB/s bandwidth ensures seamless handling of large datasets
