Introduction to LUMI



The LUMI supercomputer started operating in CSC’s data center in Kajaani, Finland, in 2021. In its final configuration in 2023, it is world's third fastest supercomputer.





LUMI is a unique European endeavor with ten European countries and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) investing in one joint system. It is set to boost research, employment, and competitiveness throughout Europe. The system supplier is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), providing an HPE Cray EX supercomputer with next-generation AMD Trento CPUs and AMD MI250X GPUs.

In addition to the remarkable computing power, LUMI is also one of the most advanced platforms for artificial intelligence in the world. As a result, it will be one of the best-known scientific instruments throughout its lifetime.

You can get more information by watching the video LUMI — world-class supercomputer.

The LUMI system architecture explained:


  • The LUMI system is supplied by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and based on an HPE Cray EX supercomputer. The peak performance of LUMI is 429 petaflop/s, meaning $ 429\times10^{15} $ floating-point operations per second This figure makes LUMI one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

  • LUMI’s computing power equals that of 1.5 million ordinary laptops combined. If these laptops were piled up, they would form a tower over 23 kilometers high.

  • LUMI is also one of the world's most advanced platforms for artificial intelligence. For example it was used to train FinGPT3 finnish language model. (AI).** With LUMI, it will be possible to combine AI, especially deep learning, and traditional large-scale simulations with massive-scale data analytics when solving research problems.

  • The number-crunching capability of LUMI is accelerated by the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) partition. It is based on AMD MI250X GPUs.



  • In total, LUMI will have a storage of 117 petabytes and an aggregated I/O bandwidth of two terabytes per second.

  • All the different compute and storage partitions are connected through the very fast Cray Slingshot interconnect with 200 Gbit/s performance, and the global bandwidth of the LUMI-GPU partition is 160 TB/s. So the whole global internet traffic would fit in there, twice, in fact!

  • LUMI takes over 150 m2 of floor space, which is about the size of a tennis court. The system’s weight is nearly 150 000 kilograms (150 metric tons).


The pre-exascale supercomputer LUMI hosted by CSC is anticipated to be among the top ten in the world when complete. Together with the other EuroHPC pre-exascale and petascale supercomputers that will be deployed in 2022, the LUMI supercomputer will help Europe’s public and private users address many daunting research and innovation problems across different areas ranging from climate change to cybersecurity and from drug discovery to personalized medicine.


LUMI is an investment of over 200 million euros, which covers the whole life cycle of the system, and will lift Europe to the forefront of high-performance computing (HPC) and computational research. Exploiting the potential of the data economy is crucial for Europe’s competitiveness.

Modern societies’ technology is strongly based on mathematical modeling such as analyses, artificial intelligence, simulations, and optimization. Therefore, powerful computing capacity and data management infrastructure are of the utmost importance for the functioning of society and the well-being of citizens.



World-class Environmental Sustainability and Energy-efficiency

The LUMI supercomputer is well aligned with the Digital and Green Deal policies of the European Commission. Located in CSC’s carbon-neutral Kajaani data center, LUMI helps the European ICT sector become greener and more cost-efficient, which is necessary for reaching the EU’s ambitious climate targets and paving the way for the green transition. CSC’s data center in Kajaani is among the world’s most eco-efficient: it uses 100% renewable energy produced with hydropower. In addition, LUMI’s waste heat will be used in Kajaani’s district heating network: 20% of the area’s yearly district heating needs will be covered by heat produced by LUMI.