$270m boost to nurture specialists, build next-gen supercomputers

The National Research Foundation (NRF) will allocate $270 million to the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) over the next three years to nurture more specialists and build next-generation supercomputers equipped for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

- Osmond Chia

This grant represents the second tranche of funding from the NRF for supercomputers, which can perform in hours complex calculations that would take standard computers days to complete.

In 2019, the NRF invested $200 million to support the projects and initiatives by NSCC Singapore, which was established in 2015 to manage the Republic's high-performance computing and drive research.

In Singapore, there is a shortage of specialists with the skills needed to operate supercomputers, which use more complex algorithms to compute data at a larger scale, NSCC chief executive Terence Hung told the media on Oct 25 at the launch event of the centre's new supercomputers.

It can take upwards of a year for programmers to come to grips with supercomputers, said Dr Hung, who estimated that there were fewer than 100 professionals proficient in the technology here.

Through collaborations with academia, workshops and initiatives that will tap the $270 million grant, he aims to grow the numbers of tech talent proficient in supercomputing into the thousands over the next few years.