'Tech v Virus 2.0' : Supercomputer Taiwania 3 activated to support research on the pandemic

In order to take full advantage using science and technology to grapple with the epidemic, which brought a new wave of great challenges in people's lives, Minister Wu Tsung-tsong of the Ministry of Science and Technology announced today (6/8) that the state-built supercomputer Taiwania 3 would officially start offering support. 

The National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabls), overseen by the Ministry of Science and Technology, has launched the "Tech v Virus 2.0" program, with services such as upgraded Taiwania supercomputers, Taiwan Computing Cloud (TWCC), DAS data analysis service, and AIoT platform, inviting academia, research organizations, start-up companies, and industries to use technology to fight the pandemic. 
The NCHC launched the "Defending Taiwan- Fighting the Pandemic with Technology Project" last year, offering free access to NCHC computing resources for approved proposals from the public. Many of those have evolved into successful projects with outstanding results. For example, Heroic Faith Medical has developed the world's first "Personal Handheld Stethoscope", which can reduce the risk of virus transmission between frontline medical personnel and patients. More than hundreds of medical institutions of all sizes have indicated their need for the product, and Heroic Faith Medical has submitted the application for emergency medical permit. Graphen, Inc. uses AI data analysis tools to draw the world's first "COVID-19 gene evolution paths", which can predict the routes of virus spread and assist public health agencies in government to cope with the rapidly changing epidemic. 

Taiwania 3 is the latest HPC high-performance computing research and development platform built by the NCHC. With 2.7 Petaflops¹computing power, Taiwania 3 offers high-efficiency parallel and distributed CPU environment which has a stand-alone speed 20% faster than Taiwania 1 and total computing power 300% as much as Taiwania 1. Taiwania 3 can support large-scale application research and development services in Taiwan, from biomedical science, climate change, environmental science, emerging energy projects, to further break through from existing measurements and limits, speeding up the output of results. In addition to the early activation of part of the services from Taiwania 3, the "Tech v Virus 2.0" program also joins forces with Taiwan Web Service Corporation, a private company, to offer more professional and comprehensive services via Taiwania supercomputers series, endeavoring to combat the pandemic.

"Tech v Virus 2.0" integrates Taiwania 3 high-performance computing resources to accelerate the output of R&D output to battle the pandemic

The "Tech v Virus 2.0" project, supported by new upgraded resources, is open for applications from now until July 31, calling on the academia, research organizations, start-up companies, and industries to submit their grant proposals. Topics may include but not limited to medical-related applications, pandemic control, policy communication, stabilization of people's livelihood, derivative applications, virus genetic evolutions, protein analysis, data mining, and image recognition. Topics could also cover issues such as how to make life under restriction more convenient, how to help businesses or schools run smoothly, and how to relieve and stimulate economy. Once the proposal has been reviewed and approved, free access to the national cloud computing resources will be granted. Welcome to put our heads together to tackle the difficulties and develop innovative epidemic prevention technology.

Director General Shepherd Shi of the NCHC said that many scientists and engineers had used their professional expertise in 2020 to contribute to fighting the pandemic. With this year's "Tech v Virus 2.0", the NCHC has not only upgraded the services, including Taiwania 3 and a one-stop data analysis tool DAS, but also joined forces with Taiwan Web Service Corporation. Together with past efforts from government and academia, we hope to do our parts for the society.

¹A floating-point is a numerical value with a decimal. Floating-point arithmetic is the four arithmetic operations of such numerical values. Floating-point is often used to measure the speed of computer operations. "Floating-point operations per second" (FLOPS) is the key to determining the computing power of a computer.