The University of Stuttgart’s Hunter supercomputer has begun operations in Germany.

First announced in December 2023, Hunter is one of two HPE supercomputers ordered by the university to take its High-Performance Computing Center (HLRS) up to exascale level. The second system, named Herder, is due to be installed in 2027.

The €15 million ($15.4m) Hunter system is housed at the university’s HLRS. It was jointly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Science, Research and Arts.

Hunter was built on the same HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4000 architecture that is used in the world’s three verified exascale systems, El Capitan, Frontier, and Aurora.

The system has a theoretical peak performance of 48.1 petaflops, making its speed nearly double that of HLRS’s previous flagship supercomputer, Hawk, while each of its 136 nodes is equipped with four HPE Slingshot high-performance interconnects.

The machine uses 100 percent fanless direct liquid cooling and, according to the university, has been designed with sustainability in mind, using energy-efficient AMD Instinct Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which combine CPU cores and GPUs in an integrated APU-accelerated architecture.

“Hunter offers scientists at the University of Stuttgart and across Germany a future-proof infrastructure for AI-based simulations and high-performance computing of a new quality,” said Professor Peter Middendorf, rector of the University of Stuttgart. “Hunter also benefits the entire ecosystem of our university with its global players, its strong medium-sized companies, and its growing start-up scene.”

Professor Michael Resch, director of HLRS added: “The rapid development of AI and an increasing focus on sustainability in supercomputing mean that high-performance computing is currently going through an exciting, transformative period. With Hunter, our user community gains a state-of-the-art infrastructure that will support them in navigating this changing HPC landscape and enable them to remain competitive at the frontiers of scientific discovery and industrial innovation.”