Portugal joins European consortium for the installation of supercomputers

Portugal, Croatia, Turkey and Spain gathered for the first time for the installation of supercomputers in Portugal and Spain. The consortium requires these devices to function on renewable energy and European technology. The meeting took place in Spain and the main objective to promote the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) to maximize the production of European technology rather than use technology from other countries, such as USA or China.

Speaking to the Lusa Agency, the minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education stated that this was the first consortium meeting, aimed at “reinforcing the intervention plan and trying to accelerate the installation of the devices - one in Spain and another one in Portugal - and reinforcing the idea of ​​green supercomputing.” In the scope of this partnership, one supercomputer will be installed in Barcelona and another in Vila Nova de Famalicão.

Both will join the European network’s first supercomputer, named BOB, installed in Riba de Ave and in test phase. It is planned it will be open to the public in January 2020. BOB is already an example of green supercomputing that can be useful for cancer cure research, precocious of tumour identification, for weather and climate change predictions, and heat and cold waves.

Lusa