Huawei plans to open a supercomputer center in Irkutsk

IRKUTSK, Feb 7 – PRIME. The Chinese company Huawei, with the participation of the Institute of System Dynamics and Control Theory of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, can locate a supercomputer center in Irkutsk, Igor Bychkov, director of the Irkutsk branch of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told reporters on Tuesday.

“So far, the first project in Russia to create a supercomputer center by Huawei on a public-private partnership with the participation of the Institute of System Dynamics and Control Theory of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is being considered … It will be used for scientific and commercial purposes,” Bychkov said.

He noted that there is a supercomputer in Irkutsk, which for a long time was included in the top 50 most productive computers in the CIS countries, but today its power is not enough for fundamental research. Therefore, as one of the ideas, the creation of a supercomputer center together with Huawei is being considered.

I held preliminary negotiations with the leadership of the Huawei division in Novosibirsk, and we drew up a pre-project plan. We hope it will be supported at the ministry level,” Bychkov said.

According to him, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation allocated a land plot in the Irkutsk Academgorodok for the construction of a building with an area of ​​about 2,000 square meters. Its construction is estimated at 220-250 million rubles. Huawei will provide hardware, including processors and graphics accelerators. The investment of the Chinese company in the creation of the center is estimated at more than 1 billion rubles.

Scientists expect that in 2024 the center will be included in the federal targeted program, then its design will begin.

Earlier it was reported that by 2031 in Russia an extensive system of supercomputer centers should reach its design capacity, providing wide access for Russian science and higher education institutions to the most modern infrastructure for high-performance computing and supercomputer modeling.

The concept of development of supercomputer infrastructure is being developed in pursuance of the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The head of state previously set the task for the government of the Russian Federation to submit proposals to increase the capacity of Russian supercomputer centers, which should then be included in the national project “Science and Universities” and the national program “Digital Economy”.