Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 May 2024
652. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when he was first made aware that Ireland's national supercomputer, Kay, was due to reach its effective end of life in November 2023; why the State is now without a national supercomputer; and when a new national supercomputer will be in place and ready to use. [20603/24]
View answer653. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science his views on the impact of the lack of a national supercomputer and how this impacts the State's ability to attract the next-generation knowledge-intensive FDI. [20604/24]
View answer654. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science if he has concerns that the lack of a national supercomputer, which means Government Departments, State agencies, industry and academia instead have to use Luxembourg's supercomputer, will create delays and backlogs, and instead make organisations dependent on using private big tech, or else miss out on the latest wave of innovation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20605/24]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 652, 653 and 654 together.
The former national high-performance computer (HPC) - “Kay” - hosted by the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) under the auspices of University Galway reached its end of life in November 2023.
In the years leading to this event, my Department worked closely with both University Galway and ICHEC for the continued operation of HPC services and made additional funding available to ICHEC to develop an interim service using an existing EU supercomputer for a fixed period, until a long-term sustainable model of HPC provision in Ireland can be agreed.
As planned, migration of researchers and National HPC Service projects from Kay to the interim service - "meluxina system" - in Luxembourg began on December 2023 and successfully concluded in April this year. Preparations are underway to fully decommission the compute component of "Kay" at the end of June. The feedback from researchers on the experience of using the "Meluxina system" has been positive in terms of the performance and capability of the system.
Irish researchers, assisted by ICHEC, now have dedicated access to MeluXina, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe and significantly superior to Kay. In addition, Irish researchers continue to use to a range of other EU supercomputers available to them on a competitive basis, due to Ireland's membership of The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU).
