Union State to Have Its Own Supercomputers - 29 March, 2003

The complex Russian-Belorussian programme for the production of supercomputers will allow to begin outputting competitive powerful and relatively cheap machines very soon. The press service of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in Moscow quoted a Russian-Belorussian group of scientists engaged in the creation of the Union State's own supercomputer as saying so.

Belorussian scientists believe that, as the result of the realisation of the programme, the production of computers in the two countries will be revived. Nikolai Paramonov, a department head from the United Institute of Informatics of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, said the beginning of this programme dated as far back as the end of 1999. The group of scientists bases its development on what is called parallel computation, one of the most promising areas in the development of high technologies. The core of the group comprises researchers from the academies of sciences of the two countries, the Moscow Supercomputer Systems and NICEVT companies and the Belorussian NIIEVM and Belmicrosystems, formerly the Integral research/production company.

According to Mr. Paramonov, plans for the year 2003 include the practical development of the streamed architecture-based SKIF series of supercomputers. The scientist says there is nothing beyond practical possibilities in these plans. Three specimens of cluster type supercomputers capable of up to 40 billion computations per second have already been made, he says.