At BASF’s supercomputer, the first calculations have been started. The supercomputer is located at the company’s headquarters in Ludwigshafen. With a computing power of 1.75 petaflops (1 petaflop equals one quadrillion floating point operations per second), the computer, called “Quriosity”, offers around ten times the overall computing power previously available. In the ranking of the 500 largest computing systems in the world, Quriosity is currently number 65. It took only one year from initial internal planning meetings to start-up.

Installing the supercomputer involved reinforcing the floor in the server room, laying more than 1,000 network cables with a total length of 15 km, as well as adding a separate water-cooling system, which can cool the supercomputer with 60,000 L of water per hour. At full capacity, the supercomputer has an electricity consumption of roughly 600 kWh, generating significant waste heat in the process.

Tasks such as simulations of industrial catalysts, crop protection products, and materials, are among the first computational tasks being run. It is important to increase the efficiency and hence sustainability of catalysts by decreasing raw material input and generating less waste. It is also critical that crop protection products work more efficiently, and in a more targeted manner, to better meet current and future requirements. For the modeling of materials and systems, such as foams and formulations, the increased computing performance enables more precise predictions regarding functionality and properties.

• BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany
• Supercomputer for Industrial Chemical Research,
  ChemistryViews.org 21 March 2017.
  BASF and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to build supercomputer to reduce computer simulation and modeling times
• BASF’s Innovation Approach,
  ChemViews Mag. 3 July 2017.
  Digitalization – especially with new supercomputer – to strengthen BASF’s leading positon as innovative company worldwide