Hungary’s most powerful supercomputer was handed over on Friday in Debrecen: the equipment called Komondor was put into operation at the Kassai út campus of the University of Debrecen, in the supercomputer center of the Governmental Information Technology Development Agency (KIFÜ).
Endre Spaller, the president of KIFÜ, said at the handover: the supercomputer cost HUF 4.7 billion, and its performance is five petaflops, which corresponds to a capacity of 50,000 laptops per minute.
The supercomputer with enormous computing power, i.e. the High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure, is now indispensable in scientific life as well as in the development of innovative industrial solutions.
Three-quarters of the equipment located in Debrecen will be used by researchers throughout the country, but 20-25 percent will also be available to businesses, he said.
He added that on a daily basis, it helps to solve tasks such as climate research, telecommunications, transport organization, energy, healthcare, materials science, astrology, or the automotive industry.
Spaller Endre indicated that Komondor can be expanded, thus it will be able to satisfy additional user needs in the future.
Zoltán Bács, the chancellor of the University of Debrecen, recalled: the first supercomputer, with much lower performance, was put into operation at the university in 2011 when seventy researchers started working with the equipment.
Today, more than a hundred researchers use the supercomputer at their university alone, which is under the management of DE, but it serves the scientific infrastructure of the entire country – he added, noting that the building and infrastructure to house the Komondor was designed in such a way that it could be expanded in the future equipment.
László Papp (Fidesz-KDNP), the mayor of Debrecen, emphasized that, in addition to science and economy, Komondor is also important for the city from an energetic point of view.
In the future, the heat generated by the operation of the supercomputer will be used to heat the sports pool in Debrecen. The necessary infrastructure is being built now, so you can get rid of district heating, the mayor added.
MTI
Photos: MTI/Zsolt Czeglédi
