Portugal inaugurates first supercomputer

Lisbon, July 5 (IANS) The first supercomputer in Portugal was inaugurated on Friday in the newly-founded Minho Advanced Computing Center of the University of Minho near the northern city of Braga, according to local media.The supercomputer called "BOB", whose installation was announced by the Portuguese government early last year, will enable "ten times the national computing capacity" and encourage scientific and business cooperation in data science and artificial intelligence, said a statement released by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and quoted by the Portuguese Lusa News Agency.A new centre has been designed to enable the supercomputer to operate mainly with renewable energy sources (wind, photovoltaic and hydroelectric), said the FCT statement, adding that part of the computer infrastructure was provided by the University of Texas at Austin under a partnership, Xinhua news agency reported.The supercomputer will provide services for research in bioinformatics, climate, maritime safety, fisheries, mobility in cities and forest fire risk management, said the Portuguese Ministry of Science earlier.A second supercomputer called "Deucalion", capable of running 10 billion transactions per second, will start operation by the end of 2020 in the same centre, according to the statement.
--IANS ksc/vd