Jean Zay Supercomputer: Advancing Scientific Research
Technological progress continues to push the limits of scientific research and artificial intelligence. At the center of this progress is France’s Jean Zay supercomputer, a high-performance computing system that supports major breakthroughs across various scientific fields. Its recent upgrade has significantly enhanced its capabilities, making it a key resource for researchers and innovators.
Unmatched Processing Power and Storage
Jean Zay, which succeeded the “Turing” supercomputer, has been upgraded to Jean Zay 4, boosting its processing capacity to 125.9 petaflops. This means it can perform 125.9 million billion calculations every second. To put this into perspective, if every person on Earth performed one calculation per second, it would take half a year to match what Jean Zay achieves in a single second.
Alongside its processing speed, Jean Zay now offers 100 petabytes of storage. This vast capacity supports large-scale simulations and data-heavy research projects, especially in areas like climate science and biomedical studies where data volume is critical. These enhancements place Jean Zay among the most powerful supercomputers in France.
Accessible to the Research Community
In 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Jean Zay would be freely accessible as a national resource for open research. This means academic teams, start-ups, and large companies can use it without charge. Opening access to such computing power expands opportunities for scientific and technological advancements across many sectors.
The range of projects supported by Jean Zay is broad. It covers language processing, multimodal computing, climatology, biomedical research, and emerging fields such as new materials, autonomous vehicles, and decision support systems. This openness encourages diverse innovations and accelerates progress in science and technology.
Driving AI Research and Development
Jean Zay plays a vital role in artificial intelligence research, particularly in training and running AI foundation models that underpin many advanced applications. The supercomputer supports both academic and industrial researchers tackling key scientific and societal challenges through AI.
AI-related projects on Jean Zay have grown exponentially, from 72 in 2019 to over 1,400 by 2024. This rapid increase reflects its significance in AI development across Europe and highlights its contribution to advancing machine learning and data-intensive AI tasks.
Energy Efficiency and Integration in European AI Initiatives
Beyond raw computational power, Jean Zay focuses on sustainability. It uses Nvidia GPUs combined with a next-generation warm-water cooling system developed by Eviden. This system recovers residual heat to warm around 1,500 homes at the Plateau de Saclay, demonstrating an efficient use of resources.
Jean Zay is also a core element of AI Factory France, a European project fostering AI research collaboration. Its role here reinforces its position as a hub for innovation and cooperation in AI technologies.
With its enhanced capabilities and open access policy, Jean Zay offers a valuable platform for researchers in science and AI. It promises to support numerous projects that could lead to significant advancements in various fields.
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