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We’re underground at the Lefdal Mine Datacenter, located near the village of Kjølsdalen in Norway’s Vestland province. The surroundings resemble a movie set from the finale of a James Bond blockbuster. Green-lit rock walls shimmer in the distance and metal staircases lead to living-room-sized modules packed with high-performance IT equipment. The corridors between them bustle with activity. Construction workers can be seen transporting materials and technicians installing new systems.
Our car winds its way through the corridors at a brisk walking pace and finally comes to a stop. Equipped with safety jackets and crash helmets, we exit the vehicle; after all, we’re in a former mine. Through the safety glass, we can already catch a glimpse of it: “Olivia,” Norway’s most powerful supercomputer. It was built in collaboration with AMD and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. AMD supplied the high-performance computer chips, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise handled the rest of the construction.
What is a supercomputer?
Supercomputers are designed from the ground up to deliver the highest possible computing power. They are typically used by research institutions and universities and contain high-performance components that make mass production too complex and expensive. Supercomputers can be up to a million times faster than general-purpose computers for complex calculations. Supercomputers typically consist of a large number of interconnected computer units, each of which contains multiple processors. These are generally called nodes.
What “Olivia” can do
Olivia boasts 252 such nodes, each equipped with two AMD Turion EPYC 9745 processors. Each processor has 128 cores, enabling Olivia to perform a large number of computations at the same time. With a total of 504 processors, Olivia is equipped with a total of 64,512 cores.
Furthermore, Olivia is built with AI in mind and contains 304 Nvidia GH200 GPUs (graphics processing units). GPUs can perform massive amounts of parallel calculations simultaneously. This makes them ideal for artificial neural networks, on which many AI models are based, including the current industry leader, ChatGPT.
17 times faster than its predecessor
According to previous tests, “Olivia” can perform computing operations twice as fast as its predecessor, called “Betzy.” This is despite the fact that “Olivia” is still in its pilot phase. What’s most impressive, however, is that “Olivia” consists of just two server racks, making it roughly the size of a standard wardrobe. “Betzy,” on the other hand, requires a whopping 16 server racks, taking up about the space of an entire living room. “Olivia” is thus not only Norway’s fastest but also its most compact supercomputer. In the long term, it is expected to achieve 17 times the computing power of “Betzy.”
How “Olivia” will help fight Climate Change
Computer-generated climate models calculate how the climate might change under different conditions. These models are based on decades of climate data and reveal the consequences of climate change. These models provide important information for taking effective climate protection measures.
One of the most important applications of “Olivia’s” computing power in research is the NorESM (Norwegian Earth System Model). This model simulates wind, temperature, precipitation and cloud density in the atmosphere. It also simulates temperature, salinity, and ocean currents, as well as vegetation, soil temperature, soil moisture on land, and more. Thanks to “Olivia”’s high AI computing power, Norway’s climate researchers expect to be able to make faster and more accurate forecasts in the future. This fall, “Olivia” will be available to Norwegian researchers and scientists, via the government services Sigma2 and Norwegian Research Infrastructure Services (NRIS).
Lefdal Mine Datacenter: Collaborating with Mercedes-Benz, supplying Heated Water to Salmon Farms, and more
The abandoned mine was carefully chosen as a location because it allows for resource-efficient construction and a high level of security. The 500-meter-long, 160-meter-deep underground complex comprises five levels. As we were told, these levels aren’t just used for data centers. For instance, Mercedes-Benz conducts crash tests for its research and development here. Various other projects are currently being kept under wraps.
Lefdal Mine Datacenter is powered by nearby renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power. This minimizes power transmission losses that can occur due to long power lines. Water from the adjacent fjord cools the systems installed in the data center. Sophisticated direct liquid cooling systems dissipate the waste heat from the high-performance equipment to the outside without ever touching the electric components directly.
The water leaving the data center is slightly heated by this process. Currently, Lefdal Mine Datacenter plans to divert the heated water to a nearby salmon farm owned by the food manufacturer Sjømatstaden to optimize the salmon breeding process. Lefdal Mine Datacenter is a private company. It is partly owned by Rittal, a German maker of control cabinets, power distribution systems, air conditioning systems and the software that runs on these devices.
“Olivia” shows what can be achieved without using fossil fuels
Lefdal Mine Datacenter has set the ambitious goal of becoming the world’s most environmentally friendly data center. Critics might point out that the Norwegian government should follow suit. There is a tendency to present Norway as a showcase for green energy, with claims that 90 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources. However, it remains one of the world’s largest suppliers of fossil fuels, a fact that has already drawn much criticism.
