Infrastructure
hessian.AI, the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence draws on a unique AI compute infrastructure: as of today, hessian.AI has established its supercomputer forty two, consisting of 79 compute nodes with 8 GPU accelerators NVIDIA A100-80GB each (632 GPU accelerators in total), an Infiniband network fabric (HDR 800) connecting all nodes, and 1.2PB of all flash storage for large-scale AI computing.
In addition, there are 4 Graphcore M2000 IPU nodes integrated into the cluster for experimental setups on an alternative platform. hessian.AI will extend the present cluster in 2023 and 2024 by two more expansion stages.
The total investment funding amounts to around 30M arising from synergistically intertwined sources: the AI Lab of hessian.AI, the federal state (BMBF) funded AI Service Center hessian.AISC, and the state-funded (HMWK) AI Innovation Lab, all aiming at providing science, companies, and start-ups access to a powerful AI supercomputer infrastructure combined with differentiated services. This allows hessian.AI to create an AI service and computing center that is unique in Germany in terms of its size, performance and range of services that is key to the European AI sovereignty.
We attach great importance to the energy efficiency of our infrastructures. For example, we equip the computing nodes very economically and have moved into one of the most efficient data centres: The supercomputer infrastructure is housed by the Green IT Cube of GSI Helmholtzzentrum, one of the most sustainable computing infrastructures in the world.
AI Innovation Lab
Primary goal of hessian.AI’s Innovation Lab is the promotion of development and production of state-of-the-art AI technology. For this purpose, we are offering the use of a modern technical infrastructure in the form of a HPC (High-Performance-Computing)-Cluster which is able to perform the execution of demanding machine/deep learning models in connection with huge datasets (Big Data).
AI Service Centre
With the AI service centre hessian.AISC, we are pursuing the goal of continuously developing and and expansion of AI computing infrastructures and services based on them. Hereby, we strengthen the European AI ecosystem and technological sovereignty.
AI Lab
The AI Lab supports hessian.AI researchers by providing infrastructure and the necessary skills to operate it. There is also support for efficient software development and deployment in the team.
“The fascination of humans with themselves is timeless. Deciphering our reasoning would have far-reaching implications, comparable to understanding the Big Bang or decoding the human genome, with multifaceted implications for science, society, and the economy. AI systems like ChatGPT, currently garnering much attention, give us hope that this dream can become a reality. They have been trained on a vast amount of text and can be applied to diverse tasks, such as engaging in conversations or summarizing and paraphrasing content.
Such groundbreaking ‘iPhone moments’, which create new economic, scientific, and societal possibilities and potentials, do not arise out of thin air. They require an ecosystem of universities, research institutions, and companies where chance encounters during coffee breaks foster discussions and the spontaneous development of new ideas. The Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence (hessian.AI) forms the nucleus of such an ecosystem.
A powerful AI ecosystem also demands adequate computing power. The AI supercomputer ‘fortytwo’ lays the foundation for this. It is not only a cornerstone for fundamental research and scientific applications in the field of AI but also significant for companies that prefer not to immediately acquire their own computing resources to address their challenges.
‘Fortytwo’ further enhances the prominence of hessian.AI. It makes it easier for us to attract and retain AI talent, as AI research increasingly gravitates towards environments where universities and technology companies can best develop their systems. Only with AI supercomputers like ‘fortytwo’ can we shape an ‘Artificial Reason’ in Europe that reflects the values of European enlightenment, human dignity, freedom, and democracy, establishing an open AI research and industry cycle ‘Made in Europe’.
hessian.AI would like to express heartfelt gratitude to all participating universities, companies, and supporters. We have laid the foundation for something exceptional, perhaps even a ‘CERN for AI’!”
Kristian Kersting, Founding Research Co-Director