Science Minister Dave Kelly has welcomed Pawsey Supercomputing Centre’s milestone to award the contract for its new supercomputer.
The system will power future high-impact Australian research projects by delivering 30 times more computer power than previous systems.
Kensington-based Pawsey selected Hewlett Packard Australia as the preferred vendor under a $48 million agreement following a CSIRO-led tender process.
The supercomputer will help meet the exponentially increasing computing needs of Australian researchers in a wide range of fields including energy, medicine, mining, artificial intelligence, radio astronomy and space.
In 2017, the Pawsey supercomputer was used in a program to protect Perth’s vast network of valuable aquifers when information gathered by water experts was ‘data-crunched’ by the computer to create advanced and detailed models of the groundwater systems under Perth.
The Pawsey centre will play a critical role in analysing data produced by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project to be constructed in the Murchison region of Western Australia.
The WA and Federal Governments announced last month the SKA project had moved a step closer to starting construction with Australia’s ratification of the global SKA agreement.
As stated by Science Minister Dave Kelly:
“Congratulations to Pawsey for this exciting milestone in its evolution, which will help make Western Australia an even more important player on the global research stage.
“The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre helps leading research minds solve our big science challenges and do so faster with more data.
“This boost in processing power at Pawsey will help researchers working on projects that include developing new diagnostic tests for COVID-19 and discovering new galaxies.
“The McGowan Government is pleased to have been able to support Pawsey with more than $17 million in funding over the past four years to support world-class supercomputing capability in Western Australia.”
