Simurgh, An Iranian-Made Supercomputer That Can Develop Itself

JAKARTA - The Iranian government is rumored to be developing a sophisticated supercomputer. The hardware is named Simurgh and will be a supercomputer capable of developing itself.

Citing IRNA, Simurg was developed by Tehran-based Amirkabir University of Technology. Citing Sputnik News, the developer explained that the new supercomputer provides large-scale data processing services for both state-run and private scientific research.

Not only that but Simurg can also be used for various needs. Examples include Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis, processing traffic data, weather, and direct image processing.

It is reported that the creation of these supercomputers costs up to 1 trillion Iranian rials. Equivalent to USD 4.5 million and IDR 64.3 billion. The development team itself consists of Iranian technicians. Ten years ago, the team also developed a supercomputer for Iran.

According to Amirkabir president Ahmad Motamedi, the development of supercomputers aims to provide a more stable infrastructure for businesses. Especially for private companies, in exchange for its service to the government.

"Currently, knowledge-based companies already offer a pretty good platform. But it doesn't have a capable infrastructure within the country. So make them use infrastructure from abroad", Ahmad said during a press conference in Tehran, Monday, May 17.

Simurg Supercomputer Capabilities

Named after the legendary Persian bird, Simurg currently has an output potential of 0.56 petaflops. It is estimated that in the next two months, Simurg will reach 1 petaflop.

According to TIA-942 standards, Simurg is developed over an area of 250 square meters and consists of 42 shelves. It is planned that the area itself will be increased to 400 square meters and filled with 84 shelves.

IRNA explained that AUT's infrastructure will allow supercomputers to reach a capacity of 10 petaflops. Align it with other countries' supercomputers. However, it will be applied in the next phase of development.

During the creation, the university cooperated with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The ministry funds nearly half of the project's funding. The other half was obtained from the scientific division of the presidential office as well as the Ministry of Science.

Supercomputer Functions

Iran is not the first country to develop supercomputers. Previously, some superpowers had already made this type of computing machine. Examples include Russia, the United States, or China.

So, what makes a supercomputer so attractive to the country? So, what is the role of supercomputers in our lives?

Before understanding that, it's good to first recognize the definition of a supercomputer. Citing Wikipedia, supercomputers are high-performance computers when compared to conventional computers.

What makes supercomputers high performance is the support of more processors. Visiting PCMag during a visit to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, supercomputers can consist of hundreds to thousands of processor cores. Therefore, it takes a large enough room for the supercomputer to keep the temperature cool and maintained.

Adam Bertsch, a high-performance computing systems technician at the laboratory, explained that Sierra, one of the United States' supercomputers, serves to help the government conduct virtual nuclear explosion experiments.

The machine is capable of monitoring and testing the effectiveness of any nuclear weapon owned by the state. And to generate simulation data with high accuracy, it takes a supercomputer to do just that.

Meanwhile, Live Science presents some functions of the supercomputer. Among other things, it has been used to reset the Big Bang, study earthquakes, simulate protein folding, mapping blood flow, modeling the spread of certain viruses, and much more.