AI Research Supercomputer Handed Over in Szeged

A supercomputer specialized in artificial intelligence research was inaugurated this Tuesday at the University of Szeged (SZTE) in SE Hungary. As part of the investment, SZTE purchased 1.75 peta flop/s of computing capacity, but thanks to the design, it also has access to significant resources managed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Tibor Szpisják, HPE's managing director in Hungary, emphasized that the company has brought the world's best technology to Szeged, as the world's three fastest supercomputers and Europe's fastest supercomputer also use the technology employed by SZTE. The expert said that the supercomputer's capacity can be increased as more and more services move to it, and the center's performance can grow indefinitely.

A strategic agreement between HPE and SZTE covering educational and research activities was signed at the ceremony. Tibor Szpisják said he was confident that the jointly developed laboratory would enable the company and the university to bring new products and services to the market.

Csaba Fekete, Director of IT and Services at SZTE, told MTI that the new supercomputer has been optimized for artificial intelligence research. University staff will primarily use it to solve medical and genomic problems, conduct research related to language models as well as solve transportation problems.

Under the agreement between SZTE and HPE, the center can be expanded very quickly, and the university will also have access to the computing capacity provided by the multinational IT company as a cloud service, if required by a given research project, the expert said.

The IT investment cost HUF 1.2 billion, and operating costs are estimated at HUF 800 million over the next five years, the director said.