What is emerging in Kragujevac? – It’s not “just” supercomputers, Serbia is building a National AI Factory, first in the Balkans!

When the Office for IT and eGovernment signed an agreement worth EUR 50 million on the purchase of supercomputers last week with the French company Bull SAS (part of Eviden Group), it seems that the news went by largely unnoticed, so the majority of the public in fact hasn’t had the opportunity to fully realize its importance.

This is the second supercomputer that Serbia is getting for the needs of the State Data Center in Kragujevac, and the agreement on the HPC (supercomputer) and AI development is part of a large interstate agreement between the governments of France and Serbia. A more encompassing explanation of this project was only provided yesterday by Eviden Group, of which said Bull SAS is a member.

Eviden Group has announced that, in Serbia, it will in fact bring together a unique, all-encompassing set of AI possibilities – the power of supercomputers for AI, the software layer and the development of AI use cases.

That practically means that Serbia will get a national AI factory.

– Together, Eviden and the Serbian administration will deploy a National AI Factory – composed of an AI Center of Excellence and a leading AI-dedicated supercomputing platform – aiming to accelerate Serbia’s AI capabilities and foster innovation across key sectors while reinforcing its technological autonomy using European technologies – the Group said in its press release.

It is further explained that, more than just a simple infrastructure, an AI Factory is an extensive and complete set of shared AI-dedicated assets – talents, expertise, software, hardware – to foster AI innovation and growth, to democratize its use and to drive successful large-scale projects.

– By providing all necessary resources with European technologies through this single contract, Eviden will empower Serbia to address the growing challenges and requirements of AI. This new National AI Factory, a first in the Balkan region, will integrate cutting-edge supercomputing resources, advanced software layers and specialized vertical expertise for use-case design and deployment – Eviden pointed out.

– To meet Serbia’s needs for computing power, Eviden will deploy its BullSequana XH3000 supercomputer, designed and manufactured in its French flagship factory. With up to 25 PetaFlops of computational power – the equivalent of 25 million billion operations per second – as well as 300 GPUs and 2.5 Petabytes of storage, this AI supercomputer will serve as the backbone of this AI Center of Excellence, providing the necessary computing power to develop and run innovative AI use cases – the company explains.

It is added that, in addition to this AI-dedicated hardware, the project will see the implementation of Eviden’s BullSequana AI platform, designed to accelerate AI applications development.

– The Eviden software layer will integrate Mistral AI assets who brings its leading European GenAI models to help drive groundbreaking use cases. This combination of hardware and software capabilities will be complemented by a vertical AI expertise drawn from Eviden’s teams in France, Czech Republic and Serbian AI ecosystem. These AI specialists will bring their deep understanding of sector-specific needs, ensuring an effective application of AI to Serbia’s strategic sectors. They will also assist in recruiting and training engineers and academics across Serbia, ensuring the AI Center of Excellence becomes a self-sustaining hub for innovation – Eviden says.

And that’s not all – according to the website of the Serbian National Artificial Intelligence Platform, Serbia is in the final phase of the negotiations for the procurement of a third supercomputer, and the plan is for it to be realized in 2006.

B. P.

Kancelarija za informacione tehnologije i elektronsku upravu Beograd

Eviden Group

Atos Group

Bull SAS

National AI Factory

Center of Excellence Kragujevac

State Data Center Kragujevac

Mistral AI

Nvidia

National Artificial Intelligence Development Platform

supercomputer

supercomputer BullSequana KSH3000

SLAIF

El Capitan

EuroHPC AI

AI gigafactories