The Simorgh supercomputer was developed by Iranian engineers and named after the mythical Persian bird.

Tehran, Iran – According to the state-run news website IRNA, Iran has launched the most powerful supercomputer to date, which was developed in the country by Tehran Amir Kabir University of Technology (AUT).

This supercomputer is named after the mythical Persian bird, named Simorgh. The current performance is 0.56 petaflops and will reach 1 petaflops within two months.

It is said that the supercomputer was completely designed and built by a team of Iranian engineers. Iranian engineers developed the country’s first supercomputer ten years ago, but some of the hardware has been imported.

The developer said that this supercomputer will provide large-scale data analysis services for various state-owned and private scientific researches. Among other things, it will be used to analyze artificial intelligence, process traffic and weather data, and image processing.

Amirkabir President Ahmad Motamedi said that in addition to providing services to the government, this supercomputer is also designed to provide a reliable infrastructure for companies focused on private companies .

He said at a press conference held in the capital Tehran on Sunday: “Currently, knowledge-based companies provide a good platform, but they do not have a good infrastructure at home, which leads them to use infrastructure abroad.”

Simorgh has a capacity of 0.56 petaflops [Courtesy: Mehr news agency]

It is said that the supercomputer will contain 42 racks in an area of ??approximately 250 square meters (2,690 square feet) based on the TIA-942 standard, and it is planned to be upgraded to be deployed in an area of ??400 square meters (4,305 square feet). Of 84 racks.

According to IRNA, Tehran’s AUT’s infrastructure will enable the supercomputer to reach a capacity of 10 petaflops in its next phase of development, which will place it among some of the most powerful international peers.

The university cooperated with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which provided half of the 1 trillion riyal (US$4.5 million) budget, while the presidential palace and the science departments of the Ministry of Science covered the rest.

According to reports, this supercomputer was designed and manufactured entirely by a team of Iranian engineers. [Courtesy: Mehr news agency]

ICT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi said that work has begun on the next-generation supercomputer, which will have 100 times the capacity of Simorgh.

He said in a tweet that the supercomputer will be named Maryam after the late world-class Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, to “thank Iranian girls for their efforts in the field of ICT.”

Stanford University professor Mirzakhani died of breast cancer in 2017 at the age of 40. In 2014, she won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious in the field of mathematics, and became the first woman to receive this honor and the first Iranian to receive this honor.