TUKE Launches First Slovak Supercomputer into Operation

Kosice/Bratislava, 20 November (TASR) – Slovakia's first operational supercomputer, named Perun, was officially launched at the Technical University in Kosice (TUKE) on Thursday, with TUKE Rector Peter Mesaros announcing that the total investment via the Recovery Plan exceeds €21 million. Investment, Regional Development and Informatisation Minister Samuel Migal (Independent) stated that the launch of the Bratislava-based supercomputer, which will be interconnected with the one in Kosice, is expected in the spring of next year. This forms part of the national supercomputer project, one of Slovakia's most significant digital-modernisation initiatives, which, according to the Informatisation Ministry, will place the country among European states with high-performance computing infrastructure. "I'm very pleased that right here in Kosice, the metropolis of the east, we've managed in a truly short time to implement a major milestone that moves Slovak informatisation forward. The Investment, Regional Development and Informatisation Ministry supports Slovak scientists, and this is one of our first tangible results," said Migal. The new supercomputer, financed via Slovakia's Recovery and Resilience Plan, is located in two sites – at TUKE and at the Slovak Academy of Sciences' Centre of Shared Activities in Bratislava. The Bratislava system has a performance of 14.5 PFlops and the Kosice system 10.16 PFlops. The ministry added that both sites will operate as a single integrated system – with unified login, shared user management and an upcoming easydata transfer service enabling fast data movement between Bratislava and Kosice. The newly launched Kosice component of the supercomputer, worth €20.9 million, also includes a unique quantum simulator, putting Slovakia among states with advanced quantum-computing capabilities. "We've succeeded in implementing a very significant technological investment in record time, and it's also an investment in the development of intellectual capital. It greatly increases the added value of the work of Slovak scientists, universities and industry, who can use the computing power to achieve new scientific outputs and practical solutions," said Mesaros. The Perun supercomputer represents key infrastructure for fields in which standard technologies are insufficient. It will be used for demanding space simulations, materials development, climate modelling and medical research. It will also play an important role in developing artificial intelligence – training large language models, image recognition, big-data processing and other tasks requiring massive parallel computing. The supercomputer in Bratislava is also ready and awaiting its final housing containers. After initial performance tests, the Perun supercomputer ranked 125th in the global TOP500 list of the world's most powerful systems. mf/df