The latest Austrian supercomputer, the Vienna Scientific Cluster 5 (VSC-5), was launched last year with a total performance of 4.3 petaflops - one petaflop means one quadrillion computing operations per second. It entered the then-current Top 500 ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers at around 80th place. If "MUSICA" were to enter the current ranking, the supercomputer would end up at around 20th place, as explained by Education Minister Martin Polaschek in Vienna on Monday.
Three locations for resilience
The "Science Center" at TU Wien is currently home to Austria's fastest computers, the VSC-4 and VSC-5, and the first part of the new infrastructure is also expected to be in place from 2024. The facilities in Innsbruck and Linz still require modifications to the premises, which is why they will start a little later, as MUSICA project manager Ernst Haunschmid explained. The fact that three locations are now being used leads to greater resilience in the system. The concept also makes it possible to connect the new supercomputer in Innsbruck to the local quantum computer infrastructure, according to Florian Tursky, the State Secretary responsible for digitalization.
This connection between the classical computer world and quantum computers, which are based on completely different principles, is one of the reasons why the MUSICA project was initially funded with 20 million euros through the Quantum Austria research offensive, which is funded by the EU's "NextGenerationEU" recovery fund. With the additional 16 million euros, a "truly state-of-the-art computing infrastructure" could be put in place, which would "significantly improve" the opportunities for scientists and companies in Austria, said Polaschek.
Strong computing power in demand
The University of Innsbruck, TU Vienna, the University of Linz, TU Graz, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Boku) Vienna and the University of Vienna are involved in the MUSICA network. The combination of classical computing and quantum computing also makes it possible to train young researchers in both technologies and solve fundamental research questions. Research into computing on a supercomputer system that is distributed across several locations is also of great scientific interest. Last but not least, MUSICA also opens up new opportunities in many economic sectors.