Most powerful supercomputer in Europe revealed: ‘As fast as a million smartphones’

This article was last updated on September 5, 2025

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

Most powerful supercomputer in Europe revealed: ‘As fast as a million smartphones’

In Germany, the most powerful supercomputer in Europe is presented today: Jupiter. The computer can perform many hundreds of billiards (fifteen zeros) calculations per second. That is comparable to nearly a million modern smartphones, according to the research center where Jupiter stands.

Jupiter is the third most powerful supercomputer in the world. In the United States there are three computers that, according to an international standard, are able to perform more than a 1000 billion calculations per second. Jupiter must also be able to achieve that speed later.

Artificial intelligence and research

The Belgian company Textgain has already used Jupiter in recent months, director Guy De Pauw tells the NOW. “To test whether everything works, we can test run with 300,000 hours of computing power.” Because Jupiter consists of several computers that work at the same time, the supercomputer does not really need that many hours for that. Large calculations are therefore ready much faster. “We have now used about half,” says De Pauw.

Textgain develops computer programs to recognize swearing words, threats and other hateful messages on the internet in all official European languages. “An AI program cannot do that automatically: you have to teach him on the basis of examples and instructions.” That process is called the training of AI.

“We make the basis at Lumi, a supercomputer in Finland. We use the hours of computing power that we have received for Jupiter to train our AI program. This makes smaller variations. For example, aimed at one specific task, such as recognizing death threats.”

Computing power of supercomputers

Supercomputers cannot just be compared one-on-one, because the speed depends on the type of calculation. For example, a climate calculation is different from developing an AI application.

The International Organization Top500 Developed a standard to get an impression of the most powerful computers in the world. This is expressed in how many billion calculations per second (petaflops) can perform the computer.

This kind of supercomputers is especially interesting for scientific calculations and the development of artificial intelligence, says Jannis Teunissen, researcher at the Mathematics & Computer Science Center (CWI) in Amsterdam.

“Many researchers in the Netherlands benefit from more computing power,” says Teunissen. “With more computing power, for example, you can perform a larger simulation or bring more details in your calculation, for example if you want to predict it again at the local level.”

“Usually it is not the case that with more computing power ‘suddenly’ you can solve a new problem. But a step bigger or more accurate can make the outcome useful. Suppose you want to calculate how the air flow moves along a Formula 1 car. With more details, such a simulation becomes more accurate and reliable, which can help the car to design faster.”

‘Show that we can do this in Europe’

For Textgain there is another advantage in addition to the computing power. “The Jupiter’s research center knows the computer inside and outside. They can therefore also look at our code and the settings, so that we ultimately need fewer hours of computing power. Our AI program is therefore ultimately ‘ready’ faster. Even if it will never be completely finished, we will have to keep training.”

Why does Textgain not use supercomputers in the US, which are even more powerful? “That is also a bit of principle,” says De Pauw. “I think it is important that we also have places in Europe to develop these types of AI programs. That we show that we can also build this in Europe and are not dependent on Americans.”

The Netherlands also has a supercomputer: Snellius. This is only intended for non-commercial use, such as research. According to the last Top500 measurement, Snellius has a power of nearly 25 petaflops, but can in theory achieve almost 38 petaflops.

This year NOS went to visit 3 there, see this video:

Share article: