From this Wednesday, the National University of Cordoba (UNC) will use “Serafín”, the most powerful supercomputer in the country, which allows 156 billion operations with decimal numbers per second. To achieve such performance, some 300 interconnected desktop computers would be needed. Argentina’s university system will have a surprise opening. In particular, the disciplines of astronomy, chemistry, biotechnology, social sciences, statistics, physics, engineering, among others, which will benefit from this machine of almost 800 kilos. Although the Argentine territory has a more powerful one, which the National Meteorological Service uses to make hourly simulations of the climate forecast, that is not available to the general scientific community. In this sense, the University spent $371,000 and is consolidated in an investment of almost $2 million since the computer center was founded.
Physicists will be able to make structures of the universe, develop catalysts, lithium batteries and even facilitate the discovery of drugs against Covid-19.
“The new cluster is especially intended for large scientific projects. Nowadays you can’t do science in almost any field if you don’t use supercomputers, they’re a fundamental tool,” Oscar Reula, director of the High Performance Computing Center (CCAD), told Infobae. Reula said that the supercomputer will be available, free of charge, to the scientific and business world, and said that they expect a great demand. He stressed, in this regard, that there are already 60 groups of researchers within the user base. “Physicists will be able to make structures of the universe, they will be able to develop catalysts, lithium batteries, until they facilitate the discovery of drugs against Covid-19,” he said. In addition, it may be used for the social and economic sciences. Its composition allows it to make a large three-dimensional simulation, which occupies an enormous flow of memory. It also allows the transfer from one node to another at a speed that until then the country had not reached. Despite the breakthrough, Reula noted that “if you compare it to the top 500 machines in the world, this is small.” “We need to invest 10 times more to get into that ranking. Argentina is the only G20 country that never joined,” said the specialist,” he said. In this scenario, Seraphim will be a bridge to the development of a wide range of disciplines since it has potential linked to the physics of materials, astronomy and engineering.
