Tanya Weaver Fri 5 Sep 2025
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/09/05/europe-enters-global-ai-race-its-first-exascale-supercomputer
With the launch of the Jupiter AI supercomputer in Germany, Europe has taken a major step towards “technological sovereignty and global competitiveness”.
Jupiter (Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research) is located at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in western Germany. First announced in June 2022, the facility will be officially inaugurated today (5 September).
The Jupiter project, led by Europe’s supercomputing body EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU), will deliver an exascale supercomputer capable of performing more than one quintillion calculations per second – or one exaflop.
Jupiter occupies a 3,600-square-metre data centre equipped with around 24,000 Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper superchips. This vast computing power will enable it to perform calculations at incredible speed.
A particular focus will be on training large AI models, or large language models (LLMs) used in generative AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. At full capacity, it is estimated that Jupiter will take less than one week to complete such a task.
Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU executive director, said: “With its exascale capabilities, Jupiter will drive breakthroughs in science, industry and society, reinforcing Europe’s technological sovereignty and global competitiveness.”
Forschungszentrum Jülich / Sascha-Kreklau
However, training LLMs consumes a great deal of electricity. But, in addition to its energy-efficient modular design, Jupiter also features a warm water-cooling system that uses the waste heat generated during operation to heat buildings on the Jülich campus.
Jupiter could be used in climate and weather simulations to accurately predict extreme weather events such as heat waves and severe thunderstorms.
According to a list of the world’s fastest supercomputers published in June 2025, Jupiter ranks fourth. The top three are located in the US.
In July 2025, Britain’s most powerful supercomputer, the £225m Isambard-AI, powered by 5,448 Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper superchips, was officially launched in Bristol.
Below is a video describing the Jupiter supercomputer project project.
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