Luxembourg Purchases €30.4m MeluXina Supercomputer

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Minister of the Economy Franz Fayot have announced the acquisition of the supercomputer MeluXina.

During a press conference earlier today, the Prime Minister and Economy Minister, alongside the Executive Director of EuroHPC, Anders Jensen, and the management of LuxProvide, presented the progress of the Luxembourg supercomputer project which integrates the European network of supercomputers.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel stated: “I am proud to announce today the acquisition by Luxembourg of a supercomputer that will bear the name MeluXina. This new supercomputer will be inaugurated in spring 2021 and made available to the economy and research. We will put a particular focus on its use by SMEs, start-ups and health services (eHealth) in order to strengthen national and European innovation. I am particularly delighted that the Grand Duchy has also been chosen as the seat of the managing body for the new European network of supercomputers".

Economy Minister Franz Fayot added: “This flagship project to support the digitalisation of our economy and our companies fits perfectly into the data-based innovation strategy of the Ministry of the Economy. Our Luxembourg supercomputer MeluXina contributes to the establishment of a digital, sustainable and reliable economy by making high performance computing accessible to companies of all sizes”.

The EuroHPC joint venture, headquartered in Luxembourg, is an initiative co-funded by the European Commission and 32 countries, including the Grand Duchy, which aims to develop a supercomputer ecosystem and infrastructure in Europe. The Luxembourg petascale supercomputer MeluXina project, to be implemented by LuxProvide in the LuxConnect data centre in Bissen, was selected in 2019 by EuroHPC to integrate a European network of supercomputers and benefit from around 35% of cofinancing.

On Monday 28 September 2020, LuxProvide, jointly with EuroHPC, signed the contract for the acquisition of the supercomputer from the French company Atos for an amount of €30.4 million.

Anders Jensen commented: “By the start of next year, the MeluXina supercomputer will boost European innovation and competitiveness and support European researchers and industry players, where that they are in Europe. But MeluXina also has a very special meaning for us because it is the first signing of a EuroHPC contract and this supercomputer will be located in Luxembourg, a participating country hosting the EuroHPC headquarters!”

The Luxembourg supercomputer MeluXina, with a computing power of 10 petaflops / second (corresponding to 10,000,000,000,000,000 computing operations per second), is focussed on the needs of companies, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups - which is unique within the European network of supercomputers. With a modular architecture, it can be used in industries and for various applications. It can thus best support the digitalisation and innovative projects of Luxembourg companies for applications relating to modeling, research, new product development, forecasting or even Big Data.

MeluXina is expected to be launched in spring 2021, by which time around 20 people will work for LuxProvide in order to operate and market the supercomputer and provide the services of the competence centre. In order to facilitate the use of MeluXina's capacities, a dedicated skills centre will guide and support companies so that they can articulate their projects in such a way as to make the best use of large-scale computing capacities.

A video presenting the MeluXina supercomputer (produced in 2019) can be viewed below: