NSTDA joins forces with HPE to launch supercomputers in the year ’65, fully developed for Thailand.
on November 30 NS.Anek Laothammathat Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (TSU) presided over the announcement. “HPE joins forces with NSTDA to upgrade Thai STI with supercomputer systems. the highest efficiency in ASEAN.” by the supercomputer project (Supercomputer) is an important matter of the country. that have been initiated since the era Air Chief Marshal Prajin Jantong former Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister than the Ministry of Justice responsible for the country’s science and technology and has been inherited from Mr. Suwit Maesincee Former Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who has set a budget for the purchase of supercomputers
Prof Anek said supercomputers are the most useful in research. Innovation development, forecasting, forecasting situations such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, small particulate matter (PM2.5), etc., aims for the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) to plan to use supercomputers. from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Thailand) or HPE to enhance the capabilities of science and technology in Thailand to advance such as technology, engineering, advanced technology. Increasing the speed of computers and AI at the same time having to study the work And must have the courage to start developing supercomputers on their own. In order to create self-reliance as the main. In addition, people need to accelerate understanding. various departments And the country’s executives highlight the importance of having a supercomputer. to benefit the country widely
side Dr. Narong Sirilertworakul NSTDA Director said that the NSTDA Supercomputer Center (ThaiSC) is one of the National S&T Infrastructure units of NSTDA. G. To support researchers from academic institutions, research institutes, both from the public and private sectors by which this new system will help increase the efficiency of researchers, including:
1.Artificial Intelligence And Artificial Intelligent & Big Data Analytics requires HPC systems to teach AI models (training) that are complex and highly accurate using big data to develop.
2. Genetic engineering and bioinformatics for medical research (Genomics and Bioinformatics for medical research) that has to store and analyze large amounts of genetic code data of humans, plants and animals in order to use the information obtained in further research or research. development such as the development of precision medical systems and upgrading agricultural products To meet the development of bio-based economy according to the BCG Economy Model, which is the current national agenda.
3. Nano-scale particle simulation and atoms for advanced materials research (Nanoscale and atomistic-scale simulations for advanced materials research) such as drug development, vaccines, biochemical industry, batteries, and advanced materials development.
4. Engineering model making For engineering simulations for industrial research, such as testing the performance of vehicles in terms of speed and safety. to reduce investment in creating technology prototypes
5. Atmospheric science and disaster management (Atmospheric science and disaster management), such as weather forecast calculations Disaster simulation or forecasting the pollution level of the country to inform the public about the situation that will occur in advance and various departments concerned can deal with incidents more effectively.
“Currently, ThaiSC offers High Performance Computing (HPC) under the TARA HPC cluster system consisting of 4,320 cores and 28 NVIDIA V100 GPUs with 750 terabytes (TB) of storage connected on the 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) network system, mainly providing services to research projects within the NSTDA, and has been open to projects from outside the NSTDA, both from the government, academia and the private sector.” Dr. Narong said
Director of NSTDA said During the Covid-19 Crisis ThaiSC has supported the research and processing of genetic information of viruses (Genomes) in order to find ways to prevent them. and treating COVID-19, for example, supporting Chulalongkorn University in implementing a project for selecting active ingredients against the novel coronavirus disease 2019 by using advanced computational chemistry techniques. to use supercomputers to screen for active ingredients in existing medicines whether it can be used to inhibit the activity of SARS-CoV-2 or the virus that causes COVID-19 or not, to help reduce the duration of drug production (At that time, there was no cure for COVID-19. and has provided services to the COVID-19 Network Investigations (CONI) group to use supercomputers to carry out the SARS-CoV-2 genome decoding project in Thailand. Using a supercomputer to process SARS-CoV-2 virus strain confirmation, the computation time was reduced from 1 week to just 2 hours, allowing the agency to deliver information about the spreading SARS-CoV-2 virus strain to the agency. medical for use in planning to cope with the outbreak of disease in a timely manner
“In addition, we have also cooperated with The Pollution Control Department (PCD) developed the use of specialized mathematical models. on air pollution (WRF-chem) to forecast the trend of PM2.5 dust situation 15 times faster, allowing the CDC to forecast the PM2.5 situation in high-risk areas such as 9 provinces in the North of Thailand. country Bangkok and its vicinities up to 3 days in advance so that relevant agencies and people can cope with the situation in time,” said Dr. Narong.
Dr. Piyawut Srichaikul Director of ThaiSC said that ThaiSC has a team of researchers and engineers specializing in advanced computing technology (HPC Specialist) who can advise on the use of supercomputers. with research in many areas, especially in 4 main fields, namely Bioinformatics, Engineering Simulations, Chemistry-Physics and AI (Artificial Intelligence). with leading supercomputer centers around the world It also has a mission to develop HPC specialists in the country, which will benefit the development of advanced technology and upgrade the STI for the country in the future.There is a plan to open the service to users nationwide in 2022. Those interested can learn more details and request the service at https://thaisc.io/ or email thaisc@nstda.or.th center ThaiSC
Mr. Plasilp Wichiwaniwet Managing Director of HPE said that HPE presented the best-of-breed Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) supercomputer, the HPE Cray EX supercomputer. It contains the latest CPU from AMD EPYC.TM 3rd Generation (Milan) with 496 CPUs/ 31,744 cores and 704 NVIDIA A100 GPU with 13 Petaflop theoretical peak performance. highest in Southeast Asia According to the Supercomputer Performance Rankings by top500.org, it has 30 times the computational capacity of the NSTDA’s existing high-performance computing system (TARA), and is liquid-cooled. Liquid cooling delivers best-in-class electrical power efficiency (PUE) with the Cray ClusterStor E1000 high-speed storage with a total capacity of 12 petabytes connected via HPE Slingshot Interconnect. 200 gigabits per second (Gbps). The system is expected to be installed and operational in 2022.
