Thanks to people like Valentin Plugaru, the chief technology officer at Luxprovide, which operates Luxembourg\u2019s supercomputer Meluxina, Europe is pushing computing boundaries – a global race that\u2019s still anybody\u2019s to win<\/p>\n
Is it correct to say that you are the mind behind three supercomputers?<\/p>\n
Almost correct. In fact, every supercomputer is not the job of a single person. I want to stress this very much. Even for the first Meluxina machine that was implemented in Luxembourg, the first national supercomputer, there was a team that did the planning, the work. I was very lucky to be part of this team. <\/p>\n
That system has now been operational for four years. We are very lucky today to set up what comes next. That is AI-optimised supercomputing, a new flagship machine for Luxembourg and in Europe, that is the computing backbone of the AI Factory of Luxembourg. And also, not a supercomputer but a quantum computer, which will form a trio of high-end computing machines.<\/p>\n
The original Meluxina is already middle-aged. Why invest in AI and quantum components for an ageing machine?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a very tricky question. Supercomputers typically have a lifetime between five and seven years. There are two elements that are closely related to this: the advancement of technology – there\u2019s new, better features that enable doing new kinds of things – and the counterpart to this, which is efficiency. Over time, if you want to keep being sustainable and to have new capabilities, you need to reinvest.<\/p>\n
Meluxina-AI will, from a timing perspective, be complementary to the first machine. It will be much more powerful for AI workloads, and the software environment around it will be completely different to the first machine.<\/p>\n
The quantum machine is very interesting because it\u2019s not a standalone system. It is always meant to be coupled with a classical computing platform. One year ago, the idea was that it would be coupled to Meluxina 1, but then we followed the national strategy for a new machine for Meluxina-AI. So, the quantum computer will now be linked not only to Meluxina 1 but also to Meluxina-AI.<\/p>\n
We are not behind. We will be leading the charge.<\/p>\n
Valentin Plugaru <\/p>\n
Chief technology officer at Luxprovide<\/p>\n
Quantum computing is hard to harness, and some say it might never work as we want it to. Is that fair to say or has it changed?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s changed. There is this very nice promise called quantum advantage and quantum supremacy. It\u2019s the moment in time where you can run some algorithms on a quantum computer which would not be possible to run on classical computing. From this point of view, we are still far. But there is a community of open-source developers, but also companies that are now investing massively into this: IBM, Google, companies have been created that are working on these topics.<\/p>\n
There are many quantum technology pathways that Europe is exploring now: superconducting, trapped ion, photonics, spin silicon. We don\u2019t know which one will be the best in the future. We are trying to build the pathway that Luxembourg believes is the most promising in this direction.<\/p>\n
On the software side, many companies are developing tools and platforms that users are adopting, which was not the case four or five years ago. There was no quantum computing standard yet, but we are beginning to see the first standards. There are now conferences and workshops.<\/p>\n
How does it compare to AI, which seemed to arrive with a bang, almost overnight?<\/p>\n
It depends how far back in time you go. Nothing comes from nothing. For AI, there were tremendous advances. Neural networks came out decades ago. Ten years ago, neural networks started to be implemented and accelerated by GPU technology, which showed it to be tremendously useful for accelerating the workload of neural networks. Deep neural node networks started to be created. The transformers, which are the basis for today\u2019s ChatGPT and the like, were proven to work in the mid to late 2010s.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t come last year, it didn\u2019t come in the last two years. We\u2019ve been seeing the rise of AI since 2015 and beyond. Quantum is still at the level of being more R&D rather than practical, but it\u2019s following the same path.<\/p>\n
What is EuroHPC?<\/p>\n
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, or EuroHPC JU, is an initiative by the EU \u2013 plus Iceland, Israel, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and the UK \u2013 that pools resources to develop a world class supercomputing ecosystem in Europe. EuroHPC is headquartered in Luxembourg. It has a \u20ac7 billion budget for 2021-27 and currently counts nine interconnected supercomputing centres across Europe, including Meluxina.<\/p>\n
On the topic of emphasis and investment, is Luxembourg, and Europe, focusing on the right areas at the moment?<\/p>\n
I can never speak for government strategy, though I am advising at European level in one of the advisory boards to the EuroHPC, it\u2019s called INFRAG, Infrastructure Advisory Group, where we\u2019re setting out the multi-annual strategic research programme for Europe. <\/p>\n
Typically, what has been said is that you always have investment into platforms and facilities, but you really need to match this with the skill development. The growth of skills is something we need to be focused on for sure into the future. We always have open positions to hire people. Every other supercomputing centre that we talk to always has a skills problem. <\/p>\n
Luxembourg has had this idea of digital economy, data economy for some time. It\u2019s writing its own AI strategy, very much in line with the European one. Everybody is working on this today. We are not behind. We will be leading the charge.<\/p>\n