They are among the 100 most powerful computers in the world, together they form the number 1 in Spain and have a calculation capacity that is equivalent to 20,000 conventional computers. The Teide and Anaga supercomputers, which work side by side and are capable of performing billions of mathematical calculations per second, are one of the great advantages of Tenerife in its desire to attract national or international research agencies that create development, prestige and wealth.
These giants full of cables, developed by the public company Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables de Tenerife (ITER), are among the strongest arguments to achieve at least two of the venues to which the Cabildo aspires, the Supervision Agency Artificial Intelligence and the Spanish Space Agency, candidatures presented by the insular Corporation to the national government last Thursday.
The pioneer was the Teide HPC (High Performance Computing, in Spanish high performance computing). It came into operation in 2013 and since then, this mega-machine has offered researchers, companies and universities a means of high processing capacity to improve and expand the scope of investigations. The Teide HPC is capable of reaching a computing power of 260 teraflops. Teraflop is a unit used to measure how many mathematical calculations each supercomputer can do per second. Teide is going to billionaire figures.
multiple applications
volcanic watchweather simulation, generation of three-dimensional animations for the audiovisual sector, astrophysical research, projects in all fields, artificial intelligence… Teide supercomputer it can be used for many facets thanks to a core of hundreds of computing nodes made up of Fujitsu Primergy CX250 S1 servers, which incorporate the latest processor technology.
Its use has been so varied that it can even be said that the Teide HPC has a Goya award for Spanish cinema. The supercomputer was used to make the soundtrack by Diego Navarro from Tenerife for catch the flagawarded the Goya Award for Best Animated Film in 2016. It was also used in another animated film, Ozzy, directed by Alberto Rodríguez from the Canary Islands.
If Teide already has that enormous capacity, just over three months ago Anaga joined it. ITER put into operation at the end of June this another supercomputer that complements and extends the benefits of Teide, which goes from having a capacity of 260 teraflops to 1,000, which multiplies its performance by four.
These facilities constitute a fundamental piece of the ALiX project for the development of infrastructures for the creation of an industrial fabric around new technologies in Tenerife. The availability of these two supercomputers working as a team is essential for the Island to aspire to be the first region in Europe with a national entity that monitors the combination of algorithms necessary to create machines with the same or similar capabilities as the human being. This is the objective of the creation in Spain of the Artificial Intelligence Supervision Agency.
Artificial intelligence has left the field of Science fiction to enter fully into our lives and, although still in an initial phase, is called to star in a revolution comparable to that of the Internet. Its applications in multiple sectors –health, economy, transport, education, communication, science, culture…– have caused countries and international organizations to begin to develop their own standards to regulate robotics.
In parallel, monitoring mechanisms will be needed. There arises the need to create a supervision agency, whose main mission will be to minimize the risks that these algorithms can bring in fields such as security, privacy and people’s health, as well as other fundamental rights.
The Island Government believes that these supercomputers and the numerous research centers on the Island are essential to aspire, with solid arguments, not only to host the headquarters of the Artificial Intelligence Agency and the Space Agencybut also the European one for tourism and the national one for volcanology.
There are the facilities of ITER itself, the Science and Technology Park of Tenerife, the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands and the different research centers of the University of La Lagunaespecially the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, which manages one of the most important telescope centers in the world. The Teide Astronomical Observatory, one of the largest in Europe, has played an important role in the race for scientific research since the 1960s.
It has 13 telescopes for night observation and 3 solar telescopes, among which the Stella I and Stella II robotic telescopes stand out, both inaugurated in 2006. Both incorporate artificial intelligence programs that collect astronomical and atmospheric information that is transmitted daily to the Communication Center in Potsdam. (Germany).
activities in space
If the Artificial Intelligence Supervision Agency will monitor robots, the Space Agency will make Spain equal to the rest of the surrounding countries that have similar figures and organizations to guide and direct strategies and activities in the field of space. This public body, with a component dedicated to national security, will make it possible to efficiently coordinate national space activities and policies, as well as Spain’s participation in international programs in this area. Tenerife and Gran Canaria aspire to this agency.
