Symbol of French technological excellence, the supermarket Jean Zay now reaches a power of 125.9 Pétaflops. It is the equivalent of 126 million billion operations per second.
Put into service in 2019 to succeed the Turing Supercalculator, Jean Zay experienced several major extensions. The last one, baptized Jean Zay 4 was unveiled in 2023 by President Emmanuel Macron. This rise in power, announced by the CNRS and Genci, confirms the central role of France in scientific research and AI.
Jean Zay 4, the last extension
This modernization carries the power of Jean Zay to 126 million billion operations per second. As a bonus, this French supermarket has increased storage of 100 petacts, capable of processing immense volumes of data.
According to the CNRS, if each human being carried out an operation per second,, it would be necessary 182 days to match what Jean Zay does in a second. Just that. It should be noted that since 2019, IA projects on Jean Zay have gone from 72 to more than 1400 in 2024, proof of its key role in European research.
This power opens up perspectives in various fields such as generative AI, biomedicine, climatology, fundamental physics, new materials, autonomous vehicles, agriculture … and even culture.
French superoder accessible to all research
One of the main assets of the French supercomputer Jean Zay 4 is due to its accessibility. Put Free for free for open searchhe benefits university teams, start-ups and large companies.
This approach encourages extensive scientific collaboration, strengthening innovation nationwide.
“”The extension of Jean Zay 4 will bring a new dynamic to all researchers, academic as industrialists, eager to expand their skills in development of artificial intelligence, in particular through generative models, to deal with major scientific and societal challenges ” underlines, Philippe Lavocat, CEO of Genci.
https://twitter.com/cnrsinformatics/status/192229604845721353
Green technology
L’energy efficiency is one of Jean Zay’s strengths. This French supercomputer has NVIDIA graphic processors and a hot water cooling system designed by Eviden. He recovers the residual heat to heat the equivalent of 1,500 households On the Saclay plateau.
This sustainable approach makes it a responsible technological innovation model. The design of the new extension was also entrusted to the French collective Obvious. The latter is known for its use of Artificial intelligence in artadding a creative dimension to this scientific project.
In the future, Jean Zay will play a key role in the European project Ai Factory France. An initiative that aims to pool calculation resources to speed up IA advances. This will strengthen synergies with other supercomputer on a European scale.
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