By Andrey Afanasiev
The Chairman of the State Science and Technology Committee of Belarus, Igor Voitov, has joined Inspur Vice President Huang Gang in discussing the creation and installation of a supercomputer cluster in Minsk: OIPI-INSPUR (with a performance of up to 100 Tflops).
The cluster is to be designed by Belarus’ United Informatics Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Belarusian State University, while the Chinese side will provide finances of around $10m. At present, the Chinese Commerce Ministry is reviewing the plans, with funding to be released from 2013-2014 if the project is approved.
Mr. Voitov notes that Belarusian-Chinese relations are rapidly developing and have already reached a level of strategic partnership — including in the sphere of scientific and technical co-operation.
“The signed agreement to create a Belarusian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission for Co-operation in High Technologies testifies to this,” he underlines. He tells us that Belarusian representatives will soon meet to discuss Inspur’s proposal for installing a supercomputer cluster in Belarus, which is viewed as being extremely important and likely to become part of the 2011-2015 state innovative development programme. It should inspire sci-tech collaboration between our countries and the attraction of further high-tech interaction between Belarus and China.
Inspur VP Huang Gang stresses that his company is a leading provider of computer platforms and applied IT solutions but only began focusing on international business in recent years; accordingly, it views the project in Belarus as being of great importance. “We hope that our project will be successful, setting an example to other countries and enabling us to more effectively compete in the area of high technologies,” asserts Mr. Gang.
