How Finnish academic users can take advantage of LUMI and CSC collaboration in international projects

LUMI is Europe’s flagship supercomputer. LUMI is owned by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, hosted by the 11-country LUMI consortium in CSC – IT Center for Science’s data center in Kajaani, Finland.

EuroHPC LUMI is one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. LUMI’s use of 100 % hydropower, and together with its waste heat reuse it makes LUMI one of the greenest in the world. LUMI is one of the most advanced platforms for Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabling the converge of deep learning, traditional large-scale simulations, and large-scale data analytics. Furthermore, LUMI features one of the most mature integrations of quantum processors to high-performance computing, being connected to VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland’s quantum computers.

LUMI will be operating at least until the end of 2027 and the planning of its successor has already started.

How a Finnish organization can leverage LUMI in their grants or projects

LUMI’s world-class resources, services and support are provided free-of-charge for Finnish academic users. Leveraging this opportunity can provide a significant advantage for your grant or project application.

Academic users affiliated with a Finnish higher-education or research institute can also use LUMI resources in collaboration with international users. This requires that the Principal Investigator (PI) who is applying for LUMI resources is affiliated to a Finnish academic research institution. In addition, LUMI’s resources can be used in collaboration projects of industry and academia. In these cases, resources are free-of-charge if applied by an academic PI and the most results of the project will be publicly available.

Several Finnish organizations have already used LUMI to support their research projects. You can find examples of research done on LUMI here.

How to apply for LUMI resources

LUMI resources are divided into national resources administered by the national mechanisms and the European-wide EuroHPC quota.

All academic users affiliated with a Finnish higher-education or research institute can apply for the national LUMI resources. Finland has a substantial amount (23 %) of LUMI resources. When applying from the Finnish quota, there are different access modes to choose from depending on your needs for LUMI resources.

Finnish resources for projects are allocated based on three categories depending on the project’s needs: GPU-hours, CPU-hours, and storage hours.

Four access modes are currently available:

• Extreme scale access mode: This mode is aimed at high-impact, high-gain innovative research in need for extremely large allocations in terms of compute time and data storage.
• Regular access mode: This mode is for applications significantly contributing to the progress of science in their domain and needing large allocations in terms of compute time, data storage and support resources.
• In addition, there are Benchmark and Development access modes. Benchmark Access mode is meant for users to collect GPU performance data on LUMI to document the technical feasibility of their proposals to be submitted to LUMI Extreme scale access calls. Development access mode is for projects focusing on code and algorithm development and developing a science portal or other infrastructure software components.

The exact resource needs vary application by application. You can find more detailed information about the access modes here.

In addition to the national resources, Finnish academic users can also apply for the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s resources. The LUMI shares belonging to the EuroHPC JU are allocated by a peer-review process, and the calls are continuous with pre-defined cut-off dates. This is an additional opportunity for Finnish researchers to apply for LUMI resources, if for example national calls are not open or the Principal Investigator is not affiliated with a Finnish academic research institution.

If you need support in applying or to understand how much resources would be available for your project, please contact us at servicedesk@csc.fi.

LUMI technical support and training

When you have been allocated LUMI resources, you also have access to technical support. LUMI User Support Team (LUST) provides support services, including general information and technical support free-of-charge. Users are directed to use the support forms found on the LUMI website to request support, which is handled via a ticketing system. In addition, the LUST team works together with vendors HPE and AMD to organize hackathons and specific calls to provide support in porting, optimization and benchmarking.

The LUST team, together with other domain experts, also provide insightful training and workshops related to the use of LUMI, AI and much more. These trainings take place around Europe and some of them are also available for online participants. LUMI-related trainings are listed on the LUMI website and are open to anyone interested.

Partner with CSC – IT Center for Science

CSC – IT Center for Science, the Finnish center of expertise in ICT, provides services at international level for research, education, culture, public administration, and businesses, and has a long-lasting experience in international collaborations and grants. CSC is engaged in several RDI projects with our partners, funded for example by Research Council of Finland, EuroHPC, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe. Our expertise covers different areas spanning from technical developments in the areas of cloud, HPC, data and AI to project-support, for example project coordination and management, engagement, dissemination and communication. We also have competences in the domains of sustainability, strategic alignment, governance and policy.

If you are interested in forming even a closer collaboration with CSC and would like to include us a partner in your project, please contact us servicedesk@csc.fi.

Example of a proposal text that you can use in your grant

LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) is one of the EuroHPC leadership-class supercomputers and one of the most advanced platforms for artificial intelligence (AI). LUMI is hosted by CSC, together with the LUMI consortium including participants from eleven European countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. It is one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The LUMI ecosystem makes CSC’s data center one of the world’s largest players in the field of high-performance computing.

LUMI’s current capacity consists of 2978 GPU nodes – each node has one 64-core AMD Trento CPU and four AMD MI250X GPUs. In total, LUMI has 11 712 AMD GPUs. The LUMI-C partition using CPU-only nodes consists of 4096 AMD Milan CPUs (over 262 000 CPU cores). LUMI’s storage capabilities include several components. In addition, LUMI has supplementary data analytics resources, a container cloud platform, and a quantum computing environment with superconducting quantum processors integrated.

LUMI is built on world-class environmental sustainability and cost-efficiency. LUMI’s use of 100 % hydropower, and its waste heat reuse makes LUMI data center one of the greenest in the world. It helps the European ICT sector become greener and more cost-efficient, which is necessary to reach the EU’s ambitious climate targets and pave the way for the green transition.