Flanders Invests in a New Supercomputer to Accelerate Research and Innovation
- Rafal Tekreeti
- Mar 5
- 4 min read
The Flemish government has announced an investment of €8.6 million for the acquisition of a new Tier-1 supercomputer, reinforcing Flanders' commitment to cutting-edge research and innovation. The new supercomputer, to be delivered by NEC Deutschland GmbH (NEC), will be housed and managed by Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) at the Green Energy Park (GEP) in Zellik, a municipality within the province of Flemish Brabant. The system is expected to become operational this fall (2025).
Strategic Importance of Supercomputing in Flanders
Supercomputers play a crucial role in addressing major societal challenges by providing unparalleled computational power for complex scientific and industrial applications. Flemish Minister-President Matthias Diependaele emphasized the strategic value of this infrastructure:
“Supercomputers possess huge amounts of computing power and lend themselves perfectly to accelerating scientific research. Thanks to this renowned research infrastructure, Flemish researchers, knowledge institutions, companies, industry, and governmental institutions will be able to tackle the greatest challenges of our society.”
The Flemish Supercomputer Centre (VSC), a partnership between the five Flemish universities, provides researchers with access to advanced computing power, data storage, and cloud applications. The new Tier-1 supercomputer will further enhance Flanders’ leadership in research and innovation, allowing scientists to conduct groundbreaking research that would otherwise be impossible with conventional computing systems.
Cutting-Edge Technology for High-Performance Computing
Following a competitive procurement process, NEC was selected to supply the new Tier-1 supercomputer, which will be installed at VUB’s Nexus Data Center on the Green Energy Park campus. This state-of-the-art system is designed to meet the growing demands of AI research and high-performance computing (HPC), while also being accessible for traditional scientific computing applications.
Ward Poelmans, Head of Scientific Data & Compute (SDC) at VUB, noted:
“This Tier-1 supercomputer is designed to meet the growing demand for AI in research and innovation, yet researchers using non-AI applications will surely also benefit from this new infrastructure.”
Sustainability and Green Energy Integration
The Green Energy Park (GEP) in Zellik is the most environmentally friendly data center in Flanders. The new supercomputer will run on renewable electricity, and its waste heat will be captured and used to partially heat buildings at the GEP campus through an advanced water-cooling and heat recovery system.
Moreover, the supercomputer infrastructure will be visible from the street, showcasing Flanders’ technological advancements in high-performance computing.
A Game-Changer for Flemish Research and Industry
The Tier-1 supercomputer will be accessible to Flemish universities, research institutions, governmental institutions, and businesses, including large companies and SMEs. It will be a game-changer in accelerating research projects, shortening development cycles, and strengthening industrial competitiveness.
Professor Wim Thiery (VUB) highlighted the system’s role in climate research:
“The Flemish supercomputer will be extensively used within our inter-university consortium of climate research teams to calculate future scenarios with complex climate models.”
VUB Rector Jan Danckaert emphasized its critical role in AI and scientific research:
“The computing power we need today and tomorrow is what this Tier-1 supercomputer will deliver to Flemish universities, research centers, and companies. It is an honor for VUB to house and manage it at the Nexus Data Center on our Green Energy Park campus in Zellik. This system will turbocharge scientific research and innovation across disciplines.”
Advanced Technical Specifications
The new Tier-1 supercomputer will feature high-performance computing capabilities, including:
21 nodes equipped with 8 GPUs (NVIDIA H200 SXM5). These nodes have 192 cores and 4 GB of memory per core and are scaled with NVIDIA Quantum-2 400 Gbps InfiniBand networking. In total, this gives 11,239 TFLOPS of FP64 computing power.
56 “high core” nodes, each with 384 cores and 2 GB of memory per core for a total of 1548.29 TFLOPS at FP64. These nodes are connected to a NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand network at 200 Gbps.
16 “high memory” nodes, each with 192 cores and 8 GB of memory per core for a total of 255.59 TFLOPS at FP64. These nodes are connected to a NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand network at 400 Gbps.
4 visualization nodes.
The storage is based on IBM Storage Scale with a capacity of 4460 TB and an additional 248 TB of NVMe capacity.
Peak power consumption: 315 kW, with 200 kW water-cooled for optimized energy efficiency.
A web portal for easy access to the system.
Real-World Applications of Supercomputing
The VSC supercomputers have already played a vital role in major scientific breakthroughs, such as:
Modeling brain function in both healthy and disease states.
Developing carbon capture technology to remove CO₂ from exhaust gases using waste heat.
Tracking the spread of COVID-19 with high-resolution epidemiological models.
Advancing AI research, enabling breakthroughs in machine learning and deep learning.
Accelerating engineering and industrial research, helping companies optimize designs and processes.
Funding and Future Prospects
This initiative is funded through the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), with the support of the Flemish government. Investing in high-performance computing ensures that Flanders remains a leader in scientific research and technological innovation.
More Information:
For further details, contact Ward Poelmans at ward.poelmans@vub.be or +32 474 85 17 58.
Explore how VSC’s supercomputers are transforming research: