Award for Cyprus Instiutute's HPCF

CyI’s High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) was awarded an honorary distinction at the recent Export Awards organised by the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry for its significant contribution and impact on the promotion of international competitiveness of local businesses.

As noted in an announcement from the Cyprus Institute, the award ceremony took place on 26 June at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, in the presence of H.E. Mr. Nicos Christodoulides, President of the Republic. Receiving the award on behalf CyI were CyI President, Prof. Stavros Malas and the Head of HPCF, Dr. George Tsouloupas.

The mission of the High Performance Computing Facility is to provide Advanced computing ICT services to CyI and its Research Centres and act as the national supercomputing facility for Cyprus providing computational and data resources to the research and innovation community of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The multi-million HPC infrastructure of the Cyprus Institute is sustained through national and European funds and throughout the last decade the Facility has had a major impact on the competitiveness of local industry through the provision of advanced computing and support.

Since its inception, the Facility has spearheaded HPC in the region providing computational capacity bundled with related services, such as engineering, training, and support. This is a key differentiator from the proliferating public cloud companies since the support provided by CyI engineers empowers small and medium-sized companies that lack such in-house expertise. Initially aimed at academia, the HPC Facility now has a growing number of industrial customers from Greece, and Lebanon in addition to Cyprus, the Cyprus Insitute announcement noted.

The Cyprus Institute’s HPC Facility has played a significant supporting role in a wide range of industries ranging from ICT to Farming and Agriculture, and Maritime. Whether it is for the development of computing algorithms for advanced medical imaging equipment, support of farming for the production of Halloumi and other local produce (through collaboration with the national Agricultural Research Institute), or the development of services for the world-wide Maritime industry for real-time weather-informed intelligent ship routing, tens of Cypriot companies with an outward facing international market have benefited from the Infrastructure of the Institute and the expertise of its engineers.

In the near future this support will be further strengthened through the operation of the European Digital Innovation Hub (“DiGiNN” project) for AI, HPC and other advanced digital technologies, which was recently awarded to CyI through a European competitive process, but also via the continuing operation of the CyI-hosted National HPC Competence Center.