15 million euros for the expansion of AI resources at NHR

Symbolic picture for the article. The link opens the image in a large view.
Modell der neuesten Generation von Hochleistungsrechnern, wie sie aus den Fördermitteln finanziert werden. V.l.: Dr. Renke Deckarm (Europäische Kommission – Vertretung in München), Prof. Dr. Joachim Hornegger (FAU), Staatsminister Huber Aiwanger, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Grill, Dr. Frederik Nagel, beide Fraunhofer IIS. (Bild. Fraunhofer IIS/Paul Pulkert)
March 26, 2025

New boost for AI research in Erlangen: A total of 30 million euros of EU funding has been earmarked for the further development of digital signal processing using generative artificial intelligence. Half of this total will be invested at the Erlangen National High-Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) for setting up and operating AI computing resources. Hubert Aiwanger, Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, presented two official funding confirmations. 

In the “DSgenAI” (digital signal processing using generative artificial intelligence) project, three Fraunhofer Institutes in Bavaria will collaborate under the leadership of Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen on new AI solutions for applications such as language models, language and audio codecs and 6G mobile telecommunication systems.

The Erlangen National High-Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU) will play a central role in the implementation of the project. The funding will allow the project to provide AI computing power in the form of more than 300 GPU of the latest and most energy-efficient generation of AI accelerators thus enabling large language models with eight billion tokens to be trained in less than four weeks. A storage capacity of over 12,000 terabytes means that comprehensive multi-modal training data can be processed. The expansion of this computing infrastructure is being supported with a budget of 15 million euros and financed entirely from EU funds – the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Further information:

FAU Press Office
presse@fau.de