Exascale computers are supercomputers that can perform 1018 floating point operations per second and started coming online in 2022. In Europe the exascale machine JUPITER is due to launch in 2023. However in 2022, LUMI – one of the pan-European pre-exascale supercomputers located in Finland – was ready to be used. It is the fastest supercomputer in Europe and the third fastest globally (the Top500 list published in November 2022). LUMI is also the seventh greenest supercomputer on the planet (the Green500 list published in November 2022). Belgium is one of the LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) consortium countries, among Finland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland (https://www.enccb.be/LUMI).
As supercomputers offer unprecedented opportunities for modelling complex material, five researchers working on different types of materials discuss the most promising directions in computational materials science in a viewpoint recently published in nature reviews materials. Veronique Van Speybroeck was also invited to contribute to this viewpoint. She expects that the exascale computing era might provide an important impetus to further close the gap between experimental observations and molecular modelling. However, many hurdles are yet to be overcome to integrate these very strong computers into the materials modelling ecosystems. You can read this viewpoint by using the following SharedIt link: https://rdcu.be/c7vRL.