The High-Performance Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) celebrated the commencement of operations for its state-of-the-art supercomputer, ‘Hunter’. Designed and manufactured by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Hunter promises to offer cutting-edge infrastructure for large-scale simulation, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics applications in the realms of science, industry, and the public sector. Hunter is also built with sustainability in mind, utilizing a 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system and a dynamic power capping approach to maximize energy efficiency.

Hunter’s architecture is powered by energy-efficient AMD Instinct Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which integrate CPU cores and GPUs. This marks a new chapter in the history of supercomputing in Stuttgart, with HLRS ready to address complex problems in engineering, weather and climate modelling, biomedical research, materials science, and more.

“Hunter offers scientists at the University of Stuttgart and across Germany a future-proof infrastructure for AI-based simulations and high-performance computing of a new quality,” said Prof. Peter Middendorf, Rector of the University of Stuttgart. “Hunter also benefits the entire ecosystem of our university with its global players, its strong medium-sized companies, and its growing start-up scene.”

Prof. Michael Resch, Director of HLRS, emphasized the transformative period in high-performance computing driven by rapid AI development and a growing focus on sustainability. “With Hunter, our user community gains a state-of-the-art infrastructure that will support them in navigating this changing HPC landscape and enable them to remain competitive at the frontiers of scientific discovery and industrial innovation,” he said.

The Hunter supercomputer, a €15 million project, received joint funding from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Science, Research, and Art, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research, facilitated by the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). “A high-performance computer like the new Hunter is not simply a technical innovation—more importantly, it is necessary for the future capabilities of our country and a key to progress in science and industry,” stated Petra Olschowski, Minister of Science, Research and Art of the State of Baden-Württemberg.

Hunter employs the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4000 architecture, aligned with the world’s leading exascale systems. The supercomputer features 136 nodes, four HPE Slingshot high-performance interconnects per node, and HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000. HPE’s holistic programming environment and performance cluster manager enhance system health, management, and power efficiency.

Heiko Meyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer at HPE, highlighted HLRS’s role in cutting-edge science and industrial applications, adding, “We are proud to help advance HLRS’s mission by taking a big step into the future of supercomputing and AI with Hunter, and subsequently with Herder. This will open up completely new opportunities for foundational research and industrial product innovation.”

Hunter’s AMD Instinct MI300A APUs combine CPUs, GPU accelerators, and high-bandwidth memory, delivering a superior performance-to-energy ratio, using 80% less energy at peak performance than its predecessor, Hawk. Brad McCredie, Senior Vice President of Data Center Engineering at AMD, remarked, “The AMD Instinct MI300A APUs are driving innovation by delivering leadership performance and efficiency for critical workloads at the convergence of HPC and AI.”

HPE’s dynamic power capping software, co-developed with HLRS, optimizes power distribution to applications, reducing overall power consumption by about 20%, aligning with sustainability goals and ensuring high performance without compromising energy efficiency. With a theoretical peak performance of 48.1 Petaflops, Hunter stands as a testament to HLRS’s commitment to advancing the capabilities of high-performance computing and contributing to scientific and industrial breakthroughs.

As HLRS and its partners continue to drive forward, Hunter’s deployment represents just the beginning of future advancements in supercomputing, promising to foster further innovation, enhance industrial productivity, and support groundbreaking research across various fields.

According to a recent survey conducted by Kaspersky in collaboration with the UAE Cyber Security Council, more than a third of parents surveyed (33%) across the UAE, believe that their children play games that are inappropriate for their age. Based on the survey, boys are more prone to such behaviour than girls – 50% and 43% of children respectively have violated age guidelines when playing games on their computers.

It’s possible that parents tend to exaggerate the problem of violating age restrictions in computer games, or children are not always aware of these restrictions: according to the children themselves, only 30% confessed that they had ever played games that were not suitable for their age. Girls are more obedient to age restrictions of video games, with 78% having never played inappropriate games, while for boys it is 64%.

Playing computer games is a common way for youngsters to spend their free time (91%). Half of them use smartphones for gaming (52%), and the second place is taken by computers (40%). Based on parents’ estimates, 41% of children play video games every day. “Parents often worry that their children spend too much time playing computer games. Of course, it is important to ensure that the child follows a routine, gets enough sleep, takes a break from the screen, and is physically active, however, parents should not blame computer games for everything”, comments Seifallah Jedidi, Head of Consumer Channel for the META at Kaspersky. “Parents should take a proactive position in this area, be interested in the latest products offered by the video game industry, and, of course, understand their children’s gaming preferences and pay attention to the age limits marking. It’s worth mentioning that today, there is a wide variety of games on offer, many of which include educational materials, and so we recommend not to prohibit this type of leisure, but rather to seek a compromise.”

To keep children safe online, Kaspersky recommends that parents:

1. Pursue interest in what games your children play. Ideally, you should try those games yourself. This will help build more trust in your family relationships and help you to understand what your child is interested in.
2. If you notice that your child plays a lot, try to analyze the reasons for this and also answer the question of whether they have an alternative that they like, ask what they would like to do besides gaming and try to engage them with another interesting hobby.
3. Be informed about current cyber threats and talk to your children about the risks they may face online; teach them how to resist online threats and recognize the tricks of scammers.
4. Use a parental control program on your child’s device. It will allow you to control the applications downloaded on the device or set a schedule for when these applications can be used.

The survey entitled “Growing Up Online” was conducted by Toluna Research Agency at the request of Kaspersky in 2023-2024. The study sample included 2000 online interviews (1000 parent-child pairs, with children aged 3 to 17 years) in the UAE.

Warner Bros. Games, NetherRealm Studios, and RTS today announced the schedule and program details for the Mortal Kombat 1 Pro Kompetition: Season 2, marking the return of the global esports program featuring Mortal Kombat 1. Kombatants of all ranks will have a chance to kompete for a cut of the $255,000 prize pool across a variety of live, in-person events in North America, Latin America, South America, and Europe, as well as multiple online tournaments.

Season 2 will begin with Pro Kompetition Mexico, an in-person event hosted in Mexico City on Feb. 22, and the program will culminate at the Final Kombat World Championship, scheduled for September 2025. For more information or to register for an event, visit the Mortal Kombat 1 Pro Kompetition online hub.

A new trailer for the Mortal Kombat 1 Pro Kompetition: Season 2 was released, including highlights from past events, along with a new look at upcoming guest fighters, Conan the Barbarian and T-1000 Terminator. Conan the Barbarian will be released on Jan. 21 as part of the early access period for Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion owners, followed by wide availability on Jan. 28. Featuring the likeness of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the title character, the towering warrior from the Conan the Barbarian (1982) film will be available for use during tournament play when Season 2 begins. The official Conan the Barbarian gameplay trailer will debut on tomorrow’s Kombat Kast, giving fans a deeper dive into this powerful fighter. Release timing and availability for T-1000 Terminator will be announced at a later date.

The road to the Final Kombat World Championship will have four different paths. There will be 10 in-person events, each with 1 vs. 1 double-elimination brackets where players can earn points towards their global leaderboard ranking. The top eight players with the most leaderboard points from in-person events will earn a spot in Final Kombat.

Mortal Kombat 1 Pro Kompetition in-person events include:

• Pro Kompetition Mexico – Mexico City, Mex. (Feb. 22-23)
• Viennality – Vienna, Austria (March 1-2)
• Texas Showdown – Houston, Texas (March 28-30)
• gamescom latam – São Paulo, Brazil (April 30 – May 4)
• Combo Breaker – Chicago, Ill. (May 23-25)
• CEO Fighting Game Championships – Orlando, Fla. (June 13-15)
• Brussels Challenge – Brussels, Belgium (Spring/Summer 2025)
• Evo 2025 – Las Vegas, Nev. (Aug. 1-3)
• Blink Respawn – Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Summer 2025)
• VSFighting – Birmingham, U.K. (Summer/Fall 2025)

The winner of the Pro Kompetition event at Evo will also automatically qualify for a spot in Final Kombat.

Additionally, players can kompete in online Pro Kompetition tournaments based on their location, with divisions and sub-divisions broken out by geographic region, including the North American League (North America East and North America West), InterKontinental Kombat (Europe East, Europe West, Oceanic, and Middle East), and Liga Latina (Brazil, Mexico, South America North, and South America South).

Each regional division will have two online qualifier events and one online regional final, with 10 online players earning a spot in Final Kombat – two winners from the North American League, four winners from InterKontinental Kombat, and four winners from Liga Latina. Please note, that participation in online tournaments will not award points towards the global leaderboard. Players must participate in any of the 10 in-person events to add points to their leaderboard ranking.

The remaining final spot will be awarded to the winner of the Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) event, an open in-person tournament that will be held at the Final Kombat location. The winner of the LCQ will round out the 20-player field kompeting in Final Kombat.

All 20 players kompeting in Final Kombat will be split into four groups of five players and kompete in a round-robin format. The top two players from each group, eight total, will advance to the final bracket and kompete in a double-elimination format, with all players starting from the winner’s side. The winner of the final bracket will become the Final Kombat World Champion. The exact timing and location for Final Kombat will be confirmed at a later date.

The Pro Kompetition will allow fans to experience all of the high-level match-ups and heated battles with more than 100 hours of live kompetition over 20 days, which can be viewed at Twitch.tv/NetherRealm, YouTube.com/MortalKombat, and Facebook.com/MortalKombat.

Pro Kompetition participants will have an opportunity to kompete in tournament matches with characters from Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns, the recent expansion for Mortal Kombat 1, the latest instalment in the acclaimed videogame franchise developed by award-winning NetherRealm Studios. Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns is available now digitally for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, the Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), including a story expansion with playable fighters Cyrax, Sektor, Noob Saibot, Ghostface, Conan the Barbarian (available beginning Jan. 21), and T-1000 Terminator (release date to be announced).