OREANDA-NEWS. June 01, 2010. RUSNANO launches an infrastructure pilot project, a high-performance computing service for the nanoindustry. The service has the processing capacity of 20 teraflops. The total budget for the project is up to 200 million rubles of which RUSNANO will finance up to 150 million rubles.

The project will help determine actual demand for supercomputing calculations in Russia today, refine a business model responding to that demand, and stimulate the domestic market for supercomputing calculations. In resolving those tasks, the project will be setting parameters for a still larger infrastructure project—establishment of a multi-access supercomputing center serving the nanotech-oindustry.

Objectives for measuring success of the project have already been set: if the project resolves 40 or more computing tasks during its 10 months of operation, it will have demonstrated its effectiveness. Not less than half the customers of the service must come from organizations that are engaged in production; not more than 50 percent may come from research, design and experimental, or pilot engineering organizations. Half or more of the tasks accepted to the service must relate directly to nanotechnology.

Customers contracting for high-performance computing services must finance 25 percent or more of the cost of services. RUSNANO will offset the remaining costs.

The project will be realized by T-Services. RUSNANO chose the company in an open tender. The customers of the computing services will be able to use the system with minimal requirements: 20-teraflop processing, a communications link of 10 megabits per second to the M9 IDF room, a regime of continuous operation and remote access around the clock, seven days a week.

The selection of calculation tasks will be made by a seven-member board of experts drawn from RUSNANO, outside specialists in nanotechnology and industrial computations, representatives of governmental bodies, and also a company-competitor of the company realizing the project.