JakartaPost-Sept 24
Indonesia has become home to ASEAN’s first shared high-performance computing (HPC) facility, giving researchers across the region access to a supercomputer designed to support artificial intelligence, climate modeling, disaster forecasting and other data-intensive research. The facility in Cibinong, West Java, was presented to delegations from all 11 ASEAN member states on Wednesday as the most tangible piece of digital infrastructure to emerge from the ASEAN-South Korea partnership, a five-year, US$10 million initiative under the Korea-ASEAN Digital Innovation Flagship (KADIF). Hosted by Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and South Korea’s Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), the facility is intended to allow researchers from across ASEAN to remotely access computing resources that remain limited in much of the region. “This facility is a significant milestone of the strengthened digital partnership between ASEAN and Korea,” South Korean Ambassador to ASEAN Lee Chul told The Jakarta Post, calling it a strategic regional asset that could advance innovation in areas ranging from AI and biotechnology to disaster forecasting and industry. Cibinong was selected partly because of its existing research infrastructure and its proximity to Jakarta, home to the ASEAN Secretariat and a key center for regional policy and administrative processes. The facility is housed at BRIN’s Data Center, allowing it to use existing research networks and a reliable power supply needed to operate and maintain the HPC system. The facility has a current test capacity of 3.2 petaflops, with a theoretical peak of about 4.2 petaflops. One petaflop represents 1 quadrillion calculations per second; a rate that would take a human making one calculation per second about 31 million years to match. BRIN deputy chairman for research and innovation Boediastoeti Ontowirjo explained the facility was also equipped with a dedicated 10-gigabit-per-second connection to facilitate remote connection from all ASEAN member states. The system is backed by South Korea’s decades of experience in supercomputing. KISTI, which is implementing the project, has served as Korea’s national supercomputing center and operated HPC systems since 1988, according to the mission of the Republic of Korea to ASEAN. In Korea, HPC has become an important research infrastructure supporting projects ranging from infectious disease research and drug discovery to climate modeling and space development. The technology allows researchers to process massive datasets and run complex simulations that would otherwise be difficult or impractical using conventional computing systems.
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