Singapore to create second national supercomputer with more on roadmap
Following its success of the first supercomputer system, Singapore is set to build its upcoming second supercomputer system in an attempt to strengthen the local research community, offering 8X more computing capacity than its previous model. The system, which has been predicted to be functional by early 2022, is deemed to be one of more planned projects over the next five years. Reports suggest that the new national supercomputer would potentially run on warm water-cooled system developed for tropical climate, while offering up to 10 petaflops of raw compute capacity, once under operation. It has been speculated that the funds for the new supercomputer system were part of the government’s SG$200 million grant from the National Research Foundation, to build up local HPC resources. Singapore’s National Computing Center (NSCC) has mentioned that the new system would probably stand out to be the ‘first of a series’; which is expected to offer future supercomputing experience and requirements to facilitate various research areas. Claims have been made that the systems would be launched in phases through 2025. Importantly, worth SG$40 million, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise was chosen as a developing partner for the system Confirming the news, HPE quoted in a statement that the national supercomputing systems would be developed using its Cray EX product line and equipped with more than 100,000 computing cores and about 900 GPU and CPU computing nodes. Furthermore, the system would also provide tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance simulation and modelling, including software simulation for quantum computing. Considering the significance of supercomputers for the local research community, steering committee Chairman at NSCC, Peter Ho cited that such systems would help stimulate the diffusion of COVID-19 droplets to curb the spread, alongside supporting the urban planners in developing townships. Source Credit: https://www.zdnet.com/article/singapore-to-build-second-national-supercomputer-with-more-on-roadmap/