Ireland’s Minister for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock TD, and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) have announced Ireland’s newest supercomputer and have given it the old traditional Irish name ‘Fionn’.
‘Fionn’ is a hybrid machine installed at a data centre in the Waterford Institute of Technology which is capable of running many different applications and workflows. It will run non-stop for the next four years, providing almost 295,000,000 hours of computation.
Fionn will enable researchers in Ireland to compute and solve a wide range complex problems faster. The creation of Fionn required a large investment of more than €3.7m, which is supported by Government through Science Foundation Ireland plus a further €450,000 from industry.
The name is iconic from Irish history and comes from ‘fionnachtain’, the Irish word for discovery, and is also a nod to mythical Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill, to reflect the size of the machine and the R&D it will enable.