The new “green” Portuguese supercomputer, Deucalion, is officially inaugurated on the Azurém campus of the University of Minho, in Guimarães. At 26 tons, this petascale supercomputer is expected to have the capacity to perform 10 million trillion calculations per second, which will accelerate the production of science and innovation in Portugal in areas such as artificial intelligence, personalized medicine, new materials and medicines. , Earth and ocean observation, fight against climate change and fires, creation of smart cities, spatial planning, mobility and autonomous vehicles.
In one hour, Deucalion can solve a problem that would take a personal computer 20 years.
It is estimated that it will consume more than one megawatt-hour, equivalent to the amount of electricity used by some 330 homes for one hour, however, the goal is that it does not use any fossil energy source.
For the Prime Minister, António Costa, it is a step towards moving from “Made in” to “Created in Portugal”.
“Everything that helps to develop knowledge and science helps create the fundamental bases for that knowledge to be transformed into innovation. And this innovation is precisely that, it is being able to create something new. And our corporate purpose, fortunately today, is already able to take advantage of this knowledge and transform it into innovation, that is, into new products or new services”, he affirms.
At this time, Deucalion is not fully functional yet. According to the rector of UMinho, Rui Vieira de Castro, tests are carried out in which “scientific communities are mobilized.”
Since 2020 it was expected, in a first phase it was assigned to Avepark, to help advance national and European science and innovation from Minho, since it is part of the Euro HPC network, where it will respond to more than 200 projects per year.
The Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), according to President Madalena Alves, will launch specific tenders for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the public administration and will allow access to the calculation time of projects already financed.
In the words of the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Elvira Fortunato, this is “a historic moment.” The official stresses that it is an infrastructure that will also be available to companies that have thus “increased their capacity to create, optimize and approve new products and services and develop value-added chains.”
The Public Administration will also be able to benefit from this supercomputer, since it will allow “going deeper into the processing of public data and stimulating the production of new relevant knowledge for citizens”, in order to improve political decisions based on scientific evidence.
Deucalion cost about 20 million euros, of which 35% comes from the European Union and the remaining 65% from the FCT budget.
Source: TSF
