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Europe Inaugurates Jupiter, Its First Exascale Supercomputer

The €500 million Atos-built system in Jülich relies on roughly 24,000 Nvidia chips, highlighting continued dependence on U.S. hardware.

Overview

  • Jupiter entered service in Jülich, Germany on September 5 as the continent’s first facility reaching exascale performance.
  • Rated for at least one quintillion calculations per second, the machine occupies about 3,600 square meters and is built around thousands of high-end accelerators.
  • Leaders cite it as Europe’s first internationally competitive platform for training large AI models, addressing a 2024 Stanford finding that Europe produced only three notable models versus 40 in the U.S.
  • Researchers plan longer-range, finer climate forecasts—extending projections from around 10 years to 30 and potentially 100 years—along with simulations for energy transition and health.
  • The project cost about €500 million split between the EU and Germany, and it is described as the fourth known exascale system after three U.S. machines run by the Department of Energy.