Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER, has been officially inaugurated in Germany, marking a major development in European high-performance computing.

JUPITER, housed at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, becomes the first European high performance computer system capable of performing more than one quintillion – one billion billion – calculations per second. This computational speed is equivalent to the processing power of 10 million contemporary desktop computers.

The JUPITER system, designed by Eviden, occupies a data centre of 3,600 square metres, corresponding to roughly half a football pitch. The installation comprises approximately 24,000 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, all connected via NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. This configuration is optimised for highly parallel scientific applications, including training artificial intelligence (AI) models and intensive simulations.

JUPITER has already achieved recognition as Europe’s most powerful high performance computing and AI system, and is currently ranked as the world’s fourth most powerful supercomputer in the June 2025 edition of the TOP500 supercomputer listings.

Exascale performance

Having surpassed the exascale barrier, JUPITER introduces significant new capabilities for European research and industry. The system’s booster partition, created by Eviden, integrates patented Direct Liquid Cooling technology, which delivers increased energy efficiency and contributed to its JEDI module earning the top position in the June 2025 Green500 energy-efficiency ranking.

The procurement of JUPITER was facilitated through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking initiative, supporting projects that require major computational resources, while ensuring “sovereign data control” through Eviden’s modular data centre approach. These pre-built modules allow rapid adaptation and extension of the data centre’s functional capacity as needed.

Applications in research

JUPITER is intended to serve as a resource driving research in areas such as climate modelling, AI, energy, and neuroscience. The system enables researchers to run the ICON atmospheric model at much finer resolutions compared to previous facilities, facilitating more accurate simulations of future climate scenarios. These advances are expected to yield more precise forecasts of extreme weather events and climate shifts linked to carbon emissions.

The system is also designed to accelerate discoveries in structural biology and drug research. Its immense computational power will permit the modelling of complex biological phenomena, such as the simulation of neural networks in the human brain at the level of individual neurons. Software platforms like Arbor can utilise JUPITER to build high-resolution models, which could contribute to the understanding of memory, learning, and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

From dramatically improving extreme weather forecasts to accelerating breakthroughs in climate science, sustainable energy, AI, quantum research, and structural biology, JUPITER will empower researchers, industries, public organizations across Europe to drive innovation at an unprecedented scale.

Boosting artificial intelligence

JUPITER’s AI-focused partition is anticipated to substantially accelerate the training of next-generation large language models, including projects such as OpenGPT-X, a multilingual system with an emphasis on the German language. By providing greater access to high-performance infrastructure, researchers will be able to train and optimise large language models more quickly, which is expected to support advancements across a range of disciplines, including science, industry, and media.

JUPITER’s power can dramatically accelerate the training of large language models, enabling breakthroughs in generative AI such as OpenGPT-X, a multilingual model with a focus on German. This high-performance infrastructure allows researchers to train models faster and more efficiently, advancing AI capabilities across science, industry, and media.

Contribution to Europe’s technology landscape

The system’s opening ceremony was attended by key public officials, including Germany’s Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst, Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space Dorothee Bär, and North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister for Culture and Science Ina Brandes.

By placing an exascale computing resource within Europe, JUPITER aligns the continent with the US and China, both of which previously led the development in this tier of high-performance computing. The project reflects ongoing efforts to bolster Europe’s digital sovereignty and AI research infrastructure, as well as its role in tackling challenges in health, environment, and industry through computational science.