A new high-performance computing system designed for artificial intelligence research has officially begun operation at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). The server was launched on Monday through a collaboration between ELTE and the Digital Heritage National Laboratory (DH-Lab), with funding from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund.
At the launch event, László Palkovics, government commissioner for artificial intelligence, said the installation supports Hungary’s renewed AI Strategy, which updates the country’s 2020 framework to reflect recent technological and legal shifts while laying out new targets through 2030.
One key objective of the strategy is the creation of a ‘Hungarian cultural model’ enabling the processing and preservation of a millennium’s worth of state historical records. The digitized data could later help inform future national planning, Palkovics noted. The Hungarian National Archives and ELTE have been tasked with executing this effort, which demands significant computing resources, now bolstered by the new system.
ELTE rector Lénárd Darázs called the server installation a milestone, recalling that when DH-Lab was founded, few anticipated that it would serve as the foundation for not only digital archiving but advanced corpus-building and AI development.
The server’s world-class computational performance will advance Hungarian language technologies and open doors for new research projects nationwide, Darázs said.
Gábor Palkó, head of department and DH-Lab’s scientific director, emphasized that the upgrade represents a major step forward for AI and digital cultural heritage research in Hungary. The system offers vastly expanded performance compared to its 2021 predecessor.
According to DH-Lab, its mission is to integrate cutting-edge AI tools into the processing and dissemination of cultural heritage in Hungary and beyond its borders. The project will strengthen national independence in AI development while linking advancements in language models with cultural preservation and commercial innovation.
Physically located at ELTE’s Savaria University Centre in Szombathely, the server features eight NVIDIA H200 GPUs, high-capacity memory and top-tier hardware valued at over 120 million forints. Researchers and students can access it remotely from anywhere in the country.
The system supports a wide range of research and development work, including chatbot creation for cultural and scientific data, testing and fine-tuning large language models, as well as building agent systems capable of processing visual and textual information. It will also assist in text simplification and the interpretation of heritage documents.
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