Taiwan’s High-Performance Computing Technology Contributes to the Fight Against COVID-19

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25/May/2020

COVID-19 has continued to obstruct the global economy since January 2020. Given the unprecedented severity of the pandemic, Taiwan has poured every resource into curbing the spread of the coronavirus. As one of the world’s major ICT manufacturers and solution providers, Taiwan has incorporated the power of supercomputing in the fight against COVID-19.

Founded in 1991, the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC), a member of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs), is the country’s only national-level supercomputing center. The NCHC possesses a large computing and networking platform facilities for use by domestic academia and the general public. The NCHC plays a leading role in Taiwan's cloud technology services by integrating high performance computing (HPC), storage, and networking to provide cloud services in storage, big data analysis, and scientific and engineering simulation.

NCHC built and launched its supercomputers Taiwania 1 and Taiwania 2 in 2018. Taiwania 2 was ranked in the top 20 amongst the world’s top 500 supercomputers in terms of speed in that same year. These super machines are now dedicated to the academic and domestic works in multiple fields, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, atmospheric, engineering, life sciences, robotics, and AI related developments.

One of the major operations of the HPC is the Taiwan Computing Cloud (TWCC). Directed by the Ministry of Science and Technology, TWCC is the AI cloud platform implemented by NCHC, along with 3 Taiwan ICT leaders: ASUS, Quanta Computer and Taiwan Mobile. While NCHC planned and supervised the project, ASUS took care of the cloud platform, server and AI application integrations, Quanta was in charge of the computing mainframe and data storage, and Taiwan Mobile was responsible for the operation of the facility, as well as top level information security. In the recent endeavors to defeat COVID-19, the computational power, storage, and big data datasets of Taiwania 2 were made available to the public free of charge based on their applications for anti-pandemic purposes. The NCHC also made several joint efforts with scientists in various fields to develop anti-COVID-19 applications, such as using AI to scan X-rays for pneumonia, collaborating on multiple sequence alignment of genes in the search for precise markers for COVID-19, and training AI with X-rays that have been marked for pneumonia. The outcomes of these works are soon to be shared globally for the fight against COVID-19.

Established in 1989, ASUS is a multinational company known for the world’s best motherboards and high-quality personal computers, monitors, graphics cards, routers, gaming computer and other technology solutions. The company is now designing and building the next-generation smart technologies. The company is highly recognized worldwide, in 2019, it has been named including the No. 1 international brand from Taiwan by Interbrand, Top Regarded Companies by Forbes, and the World's Most Admired Companies by Fortune magazine. In the year of 2020, 26 ASUS products have won the Red Dot Design Award. See more at: https://www.asus.com/us/

Established in 1988, Quanta Computer is one of the world’s leading notebook manufacturers and ranked 365 in the 2019 Fortune Global 500. The company has 4 subsidiaries specialized in areas of telecommunication, automotive electronics, robotics, and datacenter solution. Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) currently accounts for over 50% of the market shares in large scale cloud datacenter worldwide, its ODM direct marketing is number 1 in the world, accounting for 35% of the market according to IDC in 2018. See more at: Quanta Computers: https://www.quantatw.com/quanta/english/Default.aspx

QCT: https://www.qct.io/

Founded in 1997, Taiwan Mobile is a leading telecom operator providing mobile, fixed-line, cable TV and broadband services in Taiwan, and the first private telecom company to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. It is currently repositioning itself as a next-generation technology company that leads the next revolution in telecommunications, Internet, media and entertainment, and e-commerce. From 2017-2019, Taiwan Mobile has been included in the World Telecom Industry by DJSI World, and was ranked first in 2018. See more at: https://english.taiwanmobile.com/

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***As of today, May 25, the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in more than 5,434,035 confirmed cases worldwide. As of writing, a total of 441 confirmed cases were reported in Taiwan, with 43 consecutive days of ZERO domestic transmissions, 350 imported cases, 7 deceased cases, 415 cases released from isolation, and the remainder hospitalized in stable condition. See the latest update: https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En