Portugal to host European supercomputer

Following BOB’s inauguration in July, marking the beginning of operations of the first supercomputer in the country, Portugal steps further in strengthening its computing capacity, by signing, in Strasbourg, the hosting agreement for Deucalion, the Portuguese supercomputer part of EuroHPC – European High Performance Computing, the Joint Undertaking for the installation of supercomputers in several European countries.

This agreement, signed on November 26^th, strengthens the Portuguese’ Minho Advanced Computing Centre’s (MACC) capacity with a new device, that will be installed and functioning, presumably, at the end of 2020. The supercomputer Deucalion, of petascale level, will be able to perform 10 PFlops, or 10,000 billion operations per second, increasing BOB’s capacity, the first supercomputer performing in Portugal, and expanding MACC’s activities scope.

“Succeeding BOB, Deucalion embodies a significant boost in the Portuguese computing ability, and will allow an easier access by the scientific and technologic system community, for projects on intensive calculation, data science and artificial intelligence”, states Nuno Feixa Rodrigues, General Coordinator of INCoDe.2030.

The Deucalion supercomputer brings great possibilities not only for experts in Advanced Computing, but also for a growing group of applied research fields with information digital processing needs, such as Health, Earth and Space, Physics and Mobility.

These devices also convey a particular opportunity for the business structure, allowing to substantially raise its design, enhancement and new products and services’ validation skills, generating added value to the Portuguese economy.

 The Deucalion supercomputer installation in Portugal is one example of the initiatives within INCoDe.2030 Action Line 5 – Research, which is also part of the preparation of the National Advanced Computing Strategy, Advanced Computing Portugal 2030.