IBM Summit: The most powerful computer in the world against coronavirus

Ο IBM Summit, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, is used by researchers to identify chemical compounds that could help fight coronavirus.

ΟThe researchers took emergency computing time to use the IBM Summit to perform analyzes at a very fast pace. Summit managed to give results already within 2 days, which conventional computers would bring in months.

The supercomputer helped researchers identify 77 micromolecular compounds that deserve further investigation as organizations around the world try to develop a cure for the coronavirus.

The IBM supercomputer

Summit has a maximum processing power of 200 petaflops, thanks to 4.608 server nodes, each of which is equipped with two IBM POWER9 processors and six Nvidia Tensorcore V100 GPUs.

It is stored inside the US Department of Energy (ORNL) Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Summit is capable of performing unprecedented computational tasks, opening up a world of possibilities in areas such as energy, health and artificial intelligence.

The computer simulates thousands of compounds in search of those that are most likely to bind to the coronavirus protein, which allows the virus to infect host cells.

Jeremy Smith, director of the ORNL Center for Molecular Biophysics, was thrilled with the progress made with the help of the IBM supercomputer, but also tried to lower expectations.

«It does not mean that we have found a cure or cure for the coronavirus", he said. «However, we hope that our computational finding will be able to inform future studies and provide a framework that experimenters will use to further investigate these compounds. Only then will we know if any of them have the characteristics necessary for the transmission of the virus.»

Meanwhile, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the company's technical leaders had been called upon to "consider all options to help government and health services monitor and manage the outbreak."

«IBM's clinical development system has been made available - free of charge - to national health organizations to reduce the time and cost of clinical trials by providing data and analysis from devices that use the Internet. And the Business Risk Knowledge Tool has been made available to non-profit organizations", He added.

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