Intel champions university excellence

Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Intel and the university, the goal is to accelerate the university's Computational Science and HPC Masters programmes while creating an  HPC system with a storage capacity of 30 Teraflops to meet the needs of Ho Chi Minh City.

 Among other practical applications, the system is envisioned as a better way to perform traffic and urban flood modeling for the city.

Under the MoU, VNU-HCM will develop the curriculum and start the computational science/HPC Masters programme for the 2013-2014 school year with annual enrollment of 15–20 students  to educate a qualified staffs to develop HPC. Many are expected to come from the staff members of Ho Chi Minh City departments.

Intel will provide an HPC software development platform including hard disks and software development tool in 2012-2013, as well as support VNU-HCM staff to participate in training programmes.

According to Phan Thanh Binh, president of VNU-HCM, Intel would support a HPC system with a storage capacity of 1.7 Teraflops valued at VND2 billion ($100,000) for training programmes initially. The 30-Teraflop HPC center for socio-economic issue modeling supported by Intel has and  estimated value of VND66 billion ($3.16 million).

"This MoU demonstrates Intel's commitment to work with the Vietnam National University to advance HPC capability for Vietnam. We believe HPC will improve the daily lives of the Vietnamese people by finding solutions to challenges such as flooding, predicting natural disasters, and solving traffic congestion," said Raj Hazra, vice president, Intel Corp.'s Technical Computing group.

At the end of the first phase (2012-2015), the project's outcomes will be evaluated and a decision made on implementing the second phase (2016-2020).

The goal of the second phase will be develop and upgrade the HPC system to 200 Teraflops. Vietnam will need a computer system speed up to 1PFlops to serve domestic scientific and computing communities, according to Intel.