Russian supercomputer company T-Platforms, the Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Microsoft have signed a memorandum of cooperation in order to build a supercomputer technology centre in Kazakhstan. The centre is expected to boost Kazakh scientific and economic development, as well as raising the nation's standing in the international community. The document was signed in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, on November 3, 2009.
'Powerful computing resources are a key factor of national economy development,' said Bektas Mukhamedzhanov, chief executive of the Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. 'We make an aim to create and further develop a powerful computing base that will let us move to a new level of solving the challenging tasks in science, education and industry'.
The new centre's resources will be used for intensive development of the Kazakh national economy, with simulation applications planned within energy production, oil extraction, the industrial sector, state management, education and science, the public health service, ecology, finance, social services, and the defence sector.
The developers have shown interest in using HPC technology from T-Platforms in implementing the project. A supercomputer with performance of 10-20Tflops will form the core of facility, but developers plan to gradually scale the facility's capacity up to 100Tflops. T-Platforms intends to take an active hand in all stages of implementation of the centre; the Russian company is ready to carry out detailed analysis of the demands, to design a computing complex with the optimal configuration, and to provide specialists with training.
Microsoft will assist the center by providing training of the centre's specialists in deployment and applications based on Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system. The company is also interested in organising round tables and HPC-related meetings, and providing support in implementation of parallel programming course.
