StackHPC at ISC: HPC-AI in Europe Today

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Amid the heat wave across Western Europe, the StackHPC team headed to Hamburg for the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), the annual gathering of all things HPC in Europe and beyond.

High Performance Open Infra

OpenStack's presence continued in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, including StackHPC clients:

67: Sunrise at the UK Atomic Energy Authority and Cambridge University.
68: Zenith at Cambridge University.
75: MUSICA at Austrian Scientific Computing.
111: Dawn at Cambridge University AI Research Resource.
409: Toubkal at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco.

There were other OpenStack-powered entries in the TOP500, demonstrating the realisation of OpenStack's potential for HPC-AI cloud infrastructure.

The Biggest Ever ISC?

The scale of the conference matched last year's record, with approximately 3500 attendees. The exhibition floor felt busier, with exhibition stands extending into the foyer with a good configuration of extra spaces for impromptu meetings.

All aspects of AI continue to dominate the agenda, with the subject discussed at almost every occasion.

Arm Rises to the Top

China reclaimed the top spot in the TOP500 with LineShine at Shenzen National Supercomputing Centre. LineShine is a CPU-only system built using Huawei's Arm64 LX2 processor.

The Arm processor ecosystem appears to be particularly vibrant, with a wide range of competitive offerings presented at ISC, including Arm's own AGI CPU.

Sovereignty in the HPC-AI Ecosystem

There was ever greater emphasis on sovereignty, driven in particular by European HPC centres requiring software stacks with European origins or control.

Open source projects with an open governance model, such as OpenStack's Four Opens, present an increasingly relevant alternative to proprietary solutions.

As a solution for sovereign AI infrastructure, OpenStack has been gaining new integrations with AI-centric storage technology vendors:

VAST has contributed both a VAST Data volume driver and a VAST Data fileshare driver, both present in the latest 2026.1 release of OpenStack.
Weka has contributed a WekaFS fileshare driver, with the contribution currently undergoing review by the OpenStack developer community.
A spec for a Lustre fileshare driver has successfully completed community review, with driver development planned for the current release cycle.

Watch this space!

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