The inauguration ceremony, which took place today at the Sofia Tech Park gathered esteemed attendees including Tomislav Donchev, Bulgaria’s Minister of Innovation and Growth, Krasimir Vulchev, Ministry of Education and Science, Rafal Duczmal, Chair of the EuroHPC JU Governing Board along with Anders Dam Jensen, EuroHPC JU’s Executive Director.
This upgrade, making it Discoverer+ will enhance the machine’s AI capabilities and introduce new functionalities while boosting its performance significantly. By expanding its capabilities, Discoverer+ will meet the growing demands of scientific communities and businesses, benefitting SMEs in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
The system has been enhanced with GPU Partitioning to support data intensive operations, upgraded memory capacity and a UPS system (Uninterruptible Power Supply).
Discoverer, currently ranking 221st among the world’s most powerful supercomputers according to the latest TOP500 list has become the first EuroHPC supercomputer to undergo a major upgrade since its initial inauguration in 2021.
Discoverer has already served over 80 scientific projects during its lifetime in important disciplines as medicine, astronomy and material sciences. With this upgrade, it will be armed to embrace large-scale AI projects. The Discoverer consortium has also been selected to host one of the AI factories and with that endeavoured, it intends to expand both its AI infrastructure capacity as well as expertise with experienced manpower. This will equip the centre to cater to the AI needs of industry in the Bulgaria and the wider region including neighbouring countries.
Rafal Duczmal, Chair of the EuroHPC JU Governing Board, said:
«The Discoverer+ upgrade represents an advancement for both the European and Bulgarian HPC and AI communities. Bulgaria has consistently demonstrated its commitment as a European partner in the EuroHPC JU, beginning with its Council Presidency in 2018, followed by the Discoverer project, and most recently, through substantial investments in its own AI Factory.»
Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU Executive Director, added:
“The upgrade of Discoverer to Discoverer+ is another important milestone in our goal to position the European Union as a leader in the supercomputing ecosystem and we look forward to seeing ambitious and successful projects emerge from this infrastructure”
Background
The Discoverer Petascale supercomputer with a computing system capable of performing at least 4.5 petaflop or 4.5 quadrillion floating-point operations per second, is supplied by Eviden, based on the BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer and hosted by Sofia Tech Park, Bulgaria.
Today’s inauguration follows the contract signing that took place in July 2024 with the selected companies, A1 Bulgaria and Eviden.
You can read more technical information regarding Discoverer on the project documentation site.
The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity, created in 2018 and reviewed in 2021 by Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 to enable the European Union and participating countries to coordinate efforts and pool resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.
In order to equip Europe with a world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured ten supercomputers, located across Europe. Regardless of their location in Europe, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers via the EuroHPC Access Calls. This access enables them to advance science and support the development of a wide range of applications with industrial, scientific, and societal relevance for Europe.
In parallel, the EuroHPC JU funds research and innovation projects to develop a full European supercomputing supply chain: from processors and software to applications to be run on these supercomputers and know-how to develop strong European HPC expertise.
Recently reviewed by means of Council Regulation (EU) 2024/1732, the EuroHPC JU received a new mandate to develop and operate AI factories. These comprehensive open AI ecosystems located around EuroHPC supercomputing facilities will support the growth of a highly competitive and innovative AI ecosystem in Europe. In December 2024, the EuroHPC JU selected the sites that will host the first European AI Factories in Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden. In March 2025, the EuroHPC JU has selected six new sites across Europe to host additional AI Factories in Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Poland, and Slovenia.