The IH participated in the presentation of the new Advanced Computing Strategy

Portugal “is one of the pioneer countries in the process of implementing the Advanced Computing Strategy,” said Khalil Rouhana, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s General Directorate for Communication Networks, Content and Technologies. A compliment made in his speech during the presentation and discussion session of the National Strategy of Advanced Computing that took place on June 12 at the Instituto Superior Técnico. The European Commissioner stressed that “working together we will build in Europe the most powerful ecosystem for computing and data processing in the world”.

About EUR 1 billion will be invested in the next two years, half of which will be European Union funds. The European space will thus position itself where it should be: “having three supercomputers in the world TOP 10”. “The goal is “to strengthen our capabilities in this area and apply them to the benefit of citizens and businesses,” Khalil Rouhana added. “We will complement this investment with more investment in applications to make this technology available throughout Europe and for all sectors,” he said.

With the application of this computational revolution it is estimated that “the strategic value for science and industry is a 25% increase in productivity”.

Next, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, stressed that “at the end of this process the strategy is to involve businesses and public administration to create more and better jobs in Europe”. To this end, “partnerships with industrial sectors will be developed to open these infrastructures to the business sector,” he said.

At the opening of a very competitive session, Professor Arlindo Oliveira, president of the Technician welcomed the choice of the Technician for the presentation of this project “to put Europe at the center of the process of creating supercomputers”. In addition, stressing that the Technician is the Portuguese higher education institution “which has more skills in this area”.

Then Nuno Rodrigues of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) made the presentation of the national strategy highlighting that the “data are the new oil” of the planet. “There is a digital parallel world in which we all live,” he added.

“People will be the center of this revolution”, which will follow the Advanced Computing Strategy 2030, as in the National Digital Competence Initiative e.2030, Portugal INCODe.2030.

Luís Oliveira e Silva, president of the Technical Scientific Council, also said that “supercomputers are transforming our way of doing science” since “the power of computational revolution is redesigning science and engineering”.

The coordinator of the national proposal to the EuroHPC, António Cunha of the University of Minho, region where one of the European supercomputers will be installed announced that the goal is “to have the system available in the first half of 2021”. The supercomputer's already been baptized. It will be called Deucalion, like the son of Prometheus, the mythological figure who stole knowledge from the gods. It will be installed at Minho Advanced Computing Center (MACC) and will be available for “potential users of the academic community and the business community”. This is one of the projects developed under the “Advanced Iberian Computer Network – RICA”.

Throughout the session was praised this Iberian project of creating a supercomputer. A consortium of cooperation Portugal and Spain which also intends to install another supercomputer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Barcelona.

The Hydrographic Institute may use this supercomputer to be able to perform better in the race of its forecast models.