Adastra, computing power

For a year, National Computer Centre for Higher Education (Cines) in Montpellierhosts the most powerful supercomputer in France on the Saint-Priest campus. It’s called Adastra and allows researchers to perform extraordinary scientific simulations, in record time, that would be impossible on a conventional computer. Adastra performs 74 million billion calculations per second, or 74 petaflops/second.

Strong and solid

This technological gem represents a major asset for French research, and its computing power makes it among the most powerful in Europe. It is regularly mobilized for numerical simulations used in particular in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and national high-performance computing resources, converging with artificial intelligence and soon with prototypes of quantum computers. Adastra benefits all areas of scientific activity and innovation: combating global warming, health, clean transport, biodiversity, decision support, humanities and social sciences, biology, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, etc. “Says Michel Robert, director of Cines.

The supercomputer, which is worth an estimated 30 million euros, has another advantage: its energy efficiency. Thanks to a hydraulic cooling system, the machine is kept at ambient temperature while its predecessors used constant air conditioning.

Goal: 500 petaflops

Created in 1979 in Montpellier, Cines is one of only three large computing centres in France (and the only one in the provinces). The previous supercomputer, Oxygen, was three times larger. And 20 times less powerful. But compared to the first computer at the beginning, Adastra is 10 billion times more powerful. “A few weeks ago, Adastra benefited from a technological expansion that will allow it to increase its capabilities,” Michel Robert specifies. With today's technologies, it is technically possible to achieve 500 petaflops of computing power. ”