MPCDF picture of the month: September 2026
Scientific calculations often process large amounts of input and output data. These files are stored in a large shared file system. This photo shows hard disk drives in one of our storage racks. Each disk has a capacity of 12 Terabytes, providing multiple petabytes of total storage space. All the compute nodes of a supercomputer can access this storage via the network. When supporting users in optimizing their codes, we focus not only on computational efficiency, but also on reducing bottlenecks in file operations.
High-performance computing and data analytics application support for the MPG
The MPCDF provides high-level support for the development, optimization, analysis and visualization of high-performance computing (HPC) and data analytics (HPDA) applications to Max-Planck Institutes with high-end computing needs, e.g. in astrophysics, fusion research, materials and bio sciences, polymer research, and theoretical chemistry.
MPG supercomputer Viper
Viper-CPU: Based on AMD EPYC Genoa 9554 processors: 768 CPU compute nodes, 98304 CPU cores, 432 TB RAM (DDR5), 4.9 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64). 200 Gb/s Interconnect (Nvidia NDR200, nonblocking fat-tree fabric over all nodes). 4.3 PFlop/s HPL performance. Operational since June 2024.
MPG Supercomputer Viper
Viper-GPU: Based on AMD Instinct MI300A APUs: 300 nodes, 600 MI300A APUs, 75 TB RAM (HBM3). 400 Gb/s Interconnect (Nvidia NDR, nonblocking fat-tree fabric over all nodes). 31.1 PFlop/s HPL performance. Operational since February 2025.
MPG supercomputer Raven
Based on Intel Xeon IceLake-SP processor 8360Y and Nvidia A100 GPU: 1592 CPU-compute nodes, 114,624 CPU-cores, 457 TB RAM (DDR4), 8.8 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64), 192 GPU-accelerated nodes providing 768 Nvidia A100 GPUs, 30 TB GPU RAM (HBM2), 16 PFlop/s theoretical peak performance (FP64, including tensor cores and host CPUs). HDR InfiniBand interconnect.
IBM tape library
IBM TS4500 tape library. In total, MPCDF tape libraries provide a capacity of more than 105,000 LTO tape slots and 200 LTO tape drives and store more than 300 Petabytes of long-term archives (HPSS) and backups (IBM Spectrum Protect). The data archives of Max-Planck scientists include experiment and simulation data from many science areas, e.g. from life and materials sciences, astro and fusion research, and also treasures of the World Heritage like sound recordings of endangered languages or images of historic frescoes.
National and international projects
The MPCDF, in partnership with different Max Planck Institutes is engaged in several national and international projects and research consortia, such as EU Centers of Excellence, with a focus in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and data management.
Science use cases
The brochure "High-Performance Computing and Data Science in the Max Planck Society" shows examples of cutting-edge science in the Max Planck Society which were enabled by MPCDF services.
Welcome to the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF)
News at MPCDF
News
The GPU-powered part of MPCDF’s supercomputer Viper was extended by another 27 nodes, thereby reaching its final expansion stage of 327 nodes with 654 AMD MI300A APUs.
MPCDF has contracted two new supercomputers for high-performance computing (HPC) simulations and artificial-intelligence (AI) research in the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) to become operational in the course of 2027.
A new issue of the MPCDF computer bulletin Bits&Bytes was released. Read about the procurement of next-generation HPC and AI systems for the MPG, a final extension of the Viper-GPU machine, new software installed on the HPC systems, a new tool and ...
A new issue of the MPCDF computer bulletin Bits&Bytes was released. Read about update resource limits on the login nodes of Raven and Viper, various software news including a new release of the ELPA eigensolver library developed at MPCDF, a potential ...