Komondor: Hungary's Most Powerful Supercomputer

The most powerful supercomputer in the country has been inaugurated in Debrecen, E Hungary: the ‘Komondor’ was put into operation at the supercomputer center of the Governmental Information Technology Development Agency (KIFÜ) on the Kassai út campus of the University of Debrecen (DE).

KIFÜ President Endre Spaller said at the handover ceremony that the supercomputer cost HUF 4.7 billion and has a performance of five petaflops, which corresponds to a capacity of 50,000 laptops per minute.

“High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure, a supercomputer with enormous computing power, is now indispensable in science and in the development of innovative industrial solutions. The equipment in Debrecen will be used throughout the country, three quarters of it by researchers, but 20-25% of it will also be available to businesses," he said.

He added that in everyday life, it will help solve problems such as climate research, telecommunications, transport management, energy, health, materials science, astrology and the automotive industry.

Endre Spaller indicated that Komondor can be expanded to meet additional user needs in the future.

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Debrecen, Zoltán Bács recalled that the first supercomputer, a much smaller one, was put into operation at the university in 2011, when seventy researchers started working with the equipment.

The supercomputer is now used by more than 100 researchers at their university alone, and is managed by the DE, but serves the scientific infrastructure of the whole country, he added, noting that the building and infrastructure housing the Komondor was designed to allow for future expansion of the equipment.