Nust launches Pakistan's fastest supercomputer

Dr Laghari hopes the supercomputer would give impetus to collaborative research within the country and abroad.

ISLAMABAD: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) inaugurated its fastest supercomputing facility in a ceremony held on Tuesday at its Research Centre for Modeling and Simulation (RCMS).      

The ceremony was presided over by Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Javaid Laghari.

Speaking at the ceremony, Principal RCMS Engr Sikandar Hayat highlighted some of the unique features of this state-of-the-art computing facility recently acquired by Nust through financial grant by Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST).

The supercomputer installed in NUST was the fastest GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) based parallel computing system operating in any organisation/ academic institution in Pakistan till date. The supercomputer can perform parallel computation at a peak speed of 132 Teraflops (132 Trillion Operations per second).  It is equipped with multi-core processors and graphics co-processors with inter-processor communication speed of 40 Gbps.

Hayat said that besides the supercomputer’s extensive utilisation in the computation-intensive research projects in the areas of Fluid Dynamics and Biosciences, this massively parallel facility can also be utilized to handle huge data processing applications of social sciences such as Flood and Weather Forecasting, Oil and Gas Exploration, energy efficient building designs and national transportation management.

Addressing the event, Laghari appreciated the efforts of the entire team associated with the project and encouraged all institutions to come forward and benefit from the facility acquired by Nust. He assured HEC’s full support in this regard.

Rector Nust Engr Muhammad Asghar, in his welcome address, sharing his vision, specifically mentioned that the acquisition of the supercomputing facility would be a source of inspiration for PhD scholars, abroad, to return to Pakistan.

“This will give an impetus for collaborative research between universities and other research organisations within the country and abroad.”

Dr Imran Akhtar, the key note speaker, gave a highly motivating and thought provoking speech on the occasion, encouraging young researchers to come forward and utilise the facility in solving national challenges in the areas of engineering, bio-informatics, political science, psychology and social sciences.