Iran’s Simorgh Supercomputer

The world of computers keeps on marching forward. In an era where our problems have become more complex and crunching trillions of data is the need of the hour, we need supercomputers. And, countries worldwide are racing against each other to keep on creating powerful supercomputers.

In 2021, Iran successfully built its strongest-till-date supercomputer, Simorgh. The name is derived from the mythical bird of Iran, Simurgh, who is as large as 30 birds together and possesses a vast corpus of knowledge. Hence the implication is that the Simorgh supercomputer has the computing prowess of an army of general-purpose computers. And, it will be able to provide knowledge that general computers cannot provide.

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All About Simorgh Supercomputer

Iran, in 2021, launched a domestically made supercomputer, Simorgh. It is the strongest supercomputer made by Iran to date. Developed by the engineers at Tehran’s Amirkabir University of Technology, Simorgh will be used for complex AI and ML-based processes data analysis. State-run and private businesses and agencies will also use it. The project’s total cost was $4.5 million, which was funded by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the AUT.

Technical Specifications of Simorg Supercomputer

The Simorgh Supercomputer has some impressive specs.

• The supercomputer clocks the speed of 0.56 to 1 Petaflops. In due course, this performance is slated to increase to 10 Petaflops.
• Right now, it has 42 racks. In the future, the number will be increased to 84 racks.

Purpose of the Simorgh Supercomputer

The Simorgh supercomputer will be used to crunch enormous datasets like weather or traffic data which will help create predictive modeling. It will also be used to aid AI and ML-based processes. Furthermore, the authorities have said that the supercomputer will be used both by national agencies and private entities, enhancing their productivity.

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Simorgh UPSC: A Special Analysis

During the early years of research on supercomputers, the target was to build a computer that could clock teraflop level speed. Once this was achieved, in 2008, we saw the emergence of supercomputers that achieved the Petaflop (10 to the power 15 FLOPS) level speed. Hence the attempt to build Petascale supercomputers has reasonably aged. Scientists and engineers are now trying to develop Exascale supercomputers that have the processing power similar to a human brain at the neural level.

Iran acknowledges this new benchmark, and as such, it has already started work on its next generation of supercomputers, Maryam, which will be 100 times faster than Simorgh. This is specifically tough for Iran because it can’t use US-made technologies because of its sanctions. Even in the case of Simorgh, Iran had to import some of the hardware from outside.

Iran has been competing in the supercomputer race since at least 2001. From 192 GigaFlops supercomputers made by Aerospace Research Institute to 860 GigaFlops scale supercomputers made by Info-Tech Development Company, Iran has been making steady progress in this field. And now, with the Petascale Simorgh supercomputer, the country has made a lot of progress in becoming a noticeable soft power.

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