High-performance computer facility available at DOST-ASTI

High-Performance Computing (HPC) has innovated the technological landscape of data processing, computation, and analysis. The Computing and Archiving Research Environment facility housed in the DOST-ASTI gives researchers and academics access to an HPC.

High Performance Computing involves the use of a High-performance computer or an HPC, a machine that uses parallel processing to combine computing power for the analysis of huge amounts of data and processing of intensive calculations at high-level speed.

In simpler terms, an HPC is like multiple computers clustered together in one convenient place. It functions to solve deeply complex problems that could result to breakthroughs in global research and development.

The Department of Science and Technology houses one of the first-ever HPCs in the Philippines. Right at the heart of the DOST- Advanced Science and Technology Institute is this jewel called the Computing and Archiving Research Environment Facility, or simply CoARE Facility. Established in 2014, the CoARE Facility boasts an overall computational power of 3120 cores, storage capacity of 1.5 petabytes, and network speed of 10 gigabytes.

The CoARE Facility was conceptualized to meet the growing demand for a facility that could provide stable storage and long-term archiving for datasets used and produced in DOST researches.

CoARE Facility also forged partnerships with research institutions such as the International Rice Research Institute, UP DREAM’s Phil-LiDAR 1, DOST-PAGASA, UP Project NOAH, and UP National Institutes of Health.

CoARE offers various services to clients. Its HPC serves individuals and organizations who need to process large datasets or run highly-intensive applications such as Gaussian programming,

NAMD simulation, Weather Research and Forecasting, and Python programming for numerical weather prediction, climate modeling, big data analytics, data modeling and other kinds of research. The he Storage Service is a highly durable storage system and archiving access for environmental data such as that of IRRI, Phil-Lidar, NOAH-WISE, CORVA, and NOAH. It supports the storage of short-term or long-term datasets and can handle large quantity of files, from gigabyte to terabyte sizes.